


Perchance to Dream

by panaili



Category: Animorphs - Katherine A. Applegate, Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Canon Relationships, Canonical Character Death, Demons, Explicit Language, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Mostly Gen, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-26
Updated: 2017-08-26
Packaged: 2018-12-20 06:53:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 23,975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11915499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/panaili/pseuds/panaili
Summary: When Marco was five years old, he dreamt he was a flower and woke up to find his bed covered in earthworms and dirt.His mother nearly cried laughing, but after she helped him clean everything up, she said, “I think it’s about time for me to teach you about dreaming, sweetheart. It’ll be our little secret, okay?”For a few years, her lessons kept things light.Then she died.





	1. PART ONE

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Poetry](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Poetry/gifts).



> This is my entry for the Fandom Trumps Hate 2017 charity event, as a gift for Poetry. It's a Raven Cycle fusion fic, which for this story means that we'll be seeing the Animorphs characters in the Raven Cycle universe (though about 15 years in the past, as it still takes place in the 90s.) This fic has grown into a massive story compared to my original plot bunny, so I really hope you all enjoy it. :)
> 
> I kind of play fast and loose with the Raven Cycle canon, mostly because Maggie Stiefvater is frustratingly vague about how Cabeswater fits into the dream world in general & what Greywarens actually are, so I'm just going with my headcanon on it. I'm sure the new Ronan trilogy will wind up jossing this fic in the end, but whatever. :P
> 
> You do not need to be familiar with the Raven Cycle to understand this fic. You probably should be familiar with Animorphs, given that it's focused on the characters from that series, but it's a fusion, so it's all weird regardless.

 

 

 

 

 

  _To die, to sleep,_  
_To sleep, perchance to Dream; aye, there's the rub,_  
_for in that sleep of death, what dreams may come,_  
_when we have shuffled off this mortal coil,_  
_must give us pause._

\- Hamlet, Act III, Scene I

 

 

 

**MARCO**

 

 

_When Marco was five years old, he dreamt he was a flower and woke up to find his bed covered in earthworms and dirt._

_His mother nearly cried laughing, but after she helped him clean everything up, she said, “I think it’s about time for me to teach you about dreaming, sweetheart. It’ll be our little secret, okay?”_

_For a few years, her lessons kept things light._

_Then she died._

  

- 

 

At three o’clock that morning, Marco woke up from a nightmare to a rattlesnake winding around his arm. He stifled a shriek and flung it out the window, where it no doubt began destroying the natural ecosystem or whatever it was they talked about in science class. He couldn’t get back to sleep afterwards, recalling dreams where trees loomed ominously and roots dragged him beneath the mud, so he spent the rest of the night playing video games on his old 13-inch TV instead. He kept it low just in case, but the empty six-pack in the trash well assured that his dad wouldn’t be waking up anytime soon. 

It made for a poor start to the day. 

“Dude, were you even listening?” Jake prodded, poking Marco in the side. 

Marco gave him a look that said _do you even have to ask?_ without bothering to lift his head from its slouched position against his hand. 

“She’s assigning groups,” Jake explained. “We’re with Tobias.”

He said it in a carefully neutral way, like he didn’t care, but Marco had been there the day Jake saved Tobias from a group of bullies bathing him in toilet water. It wasn’t so much that Jake preened from the obvious worship in Tobias’ eyes. He wasn’t really the type to be full of himself. But Marco couldn’t help being rankled by the way Jake seemed more satisfied by his good deed than any of their various hijinks. 

Make way for King Jake, savior of the Dweebs. 

Tobias eyed Marco warily as he made his way over, picking carefully through the patchy grass. It wasn’t a mystery why, as Marco had never been subtle about his opinion about Jake’s new pet, but Jake was giving him a look that suggested in no uncertain tones that he wanted Marco to play nice and Marco felt too tired to fight it. 

“What’s up?” Marco greeted. He even managed to smile, though from Jake’s unimpressed expression, it was not convincing. 

Tobias wasn’t stupid. He watched Marco with heightened skepticism and said nothing. 

Marco looked away, having accomplished his obligation of greeting Jake’s loser friend, and watched the rest of their class mill around beside the forest line. It was a fairly impressive class trip, all things considered: a half-day hike in the forest investigating the local fauna as middle school science teachers and various parent chaperones hovered anxiously. 

Marco had told his dad about the trip, but in the end he had to forge the permission slip to even be allowed to go. His dad didn’t pay attention to more than the television and the bottom of a beer bottle these days. 

He couldn’t say he was surprised. His family hadn’t been much for hiking after Marco’s mother had disappeared two years ago. To this day, Marco wondered why she’d tried to take a moonlight hike when the forecast called for storms. His mom had been an experienced hiker. It made no sense.

He’d tried to look for her in his dreams, but nothing really worked right anymore. 

Marco stared at the looming trees, leaves dappled brightly with sunlight and looking uncannily cheerful. It contrasted harshly with his thoughts.

“Hey,” Jake said, sitting down next to him on the log. Tobias was standing off to the side, staring up at the sun-kissed trees with a dreamy look in his eyes, like he’d never seen trees before. “Are you going to be okay, man?” 

Marco stared sidelong at him. “I’m here, aren’t I?”

“Yeah, but you look like you barely slept and you haven’t said anything mean-yet-funny all day.” 

“Is that how you define my jokes?” Marco asked, raising an eyebrow. “I mean, I’ll take it, but I don’t know what category of humor ‘mean-yet-funny’ falls into.”

“All of them?” Jake suggested. “If they’re done right.” 

“Okay, well, here you go,” Marco said. “Am I the only one who finds it ridiculous that we’re learning about the ‘delicate balance of forest ecosystems’ by going on a mass hike through said ecosystems?” 

“Oh, you don’t have to worry about that. The forest isn’t that delicate,” a voice interrupted, and they both looked up to see Cassie hovering near them. She looked a bit awkward, hands jammed into the pockets of a pair of old overalls, but she managed a grin that Jake readily returned. Her flannel shirt was stained in the corner with something unidentifiably brown, and a dark part of Marco wanted to make a snide comment about it. 

He resisted, though less out of kindness and more due to the very real threat of Jake strangling him for insulting his crush. Marco doubted Jake would find _those_ jokes ‘mean-yet-funny.’ 

“Oh right,” Jake said brightly, “Your family lives near here, right?” 

Marco suppressed the urge to roll his eyes at Jake’s obviously fake ‘sudden’ recollection of Cassie’s home. He’d been not-so-subtly interested in Cassie since watching her help her dad with a wild hawk on Career Day in the fourth grade. 

“Yeah,” Cassie said. “My mom’s leading the tour, actually.” 

“They sent us over to let you know they’ve started the hike,” said another voice, and Marco looked over to see Rachel, Cassie’s best friend and Jake’s cousin, standing next to Tobias. Her entire presence made Tobias look extra nerdy by comparison, and based on his awkward stance, Tobias had noticed. From her perfectly styled blonde hair to her crisply matching outfit, Marco could never be sure if Rachel’s immaculate appearance was an intentional power play or if she just naturally radiated confidence.

“Are you sure you’re gonna be able to handle it, Rachel?” Marco asked, eyes growing wide with mock concern. “I hear there’s mud in the woods. And bugs. You might break a nail.”

She leveled cool blue eyes at him. “Are you sure _you_ can handle it, Marco? There might be rocks we have to climb, and you probably can’t reach the handholds.” 

“Guess you’ll just have to hold my hand and help me, won’t you?” Marco shot back, just to provoke a reaction, and Rachel didn’t disappoint with her carefully crafted sneer. 

“Why, are you scared?” Rachel asked, her tone just shy of mean. She opened her mouth to snap something else, but Jake interrupted her before she could get going.

“So, we’re heading out soon?” he asked Cassie, though he was eying Rachel with clear instructions to cool it. Marco was pretty sure Jake was trying to protect him, and the implied pity soured his mood even further. He could handle Rachel teasing him. He wasn’t about to burst into tears because of some stupid remarks. It’s not like Rachel didn’t know how his mom died. She wasn’t stupid. 

“I think most of them have already left already,” Cassie said, jumping in to help ease the conversation away from the potential fight. Marco looked over to see a long line of their classmates weaving into the forest, with just a few groups straggling along the start of the trail. She looked over at Tobias and cheerfully said, “Are you with Jake’s group? We can probably work together if we hang back.” 

Tobias murmured something in return, but Marco had already given up on listening for the day, irritation simmering beneath his skin. He stared into the forest, remembering his dark dreams of spidery branches and sinuous shapes hunting by moonlight. A chill went down his neck, but the forest in front of them stayed mockingly pleasant and bright. 

Marco sighed and trudged along behind Jake, hands shoved deep in his pockets. 

It was going to be a long day.

 

 

* * *

 

 

**TOBIAS**

 

 

_Sometimes Tobias thought he could remember his mother. He’d see flashes of blonde hair, a bright smile, a warm laugh – just enough to light a spark of familiarity in his heart; something warm and comforting, but not enough for him to get a clear picture._

_He’d look into the bathroom mirror and stare at his face, wondering what parts came from which parent. His aunt, ten years divorced from his uncle and still salty about it, smiled so rarely it was hard to tell if they shared any features._

_By the time Tobias was thirteen, he had resigned himself to staring in the mirror and seeing nothing but his own tired blue eyes staring back, features bland and uninspiring._

_He never had any memories of his father, but that was just as well._

_Most days, Tobias wasn’t sure they’d have wanted a kid like him anyway._

  

- 

 

Their group was the last one into the woods. Tobias was pretty sure one of the teachers was supposed to be bringing up the rear, but he could only see one adult, and she was walking with the group in front of them. She kept looking back at them, clearly frustrated by their slow pace. 

She was not alone. 

“Marco, seriously?” Rachel snapped in exasperation. “This is the second time you’ve stopped to tie your shoes. Could we maybe get on with our lives?”

“I’m tying the other shoe this time, genius,” Marco muttered.

“Wow, did you think of doing that before coming to the trail? Or maybe doing it correctly when you left the house? Because I don’t know about you, but I learned how to do that when I was _four_.”

“Calm down, Rachel,” Cassie said, waving a hand in between them like it might cut through the tension. She held a packet in her other hand. “We need to mark down the different types of leaves we see anyway, so this gives us a chance.”

Tobias looked down at his own packet, which was half covered in poorly drawn doodles from the day before and not much else. He hadn’t even bothered to write his name. 

It was hard to feel comfortable with this new study group, full of kids who had clearly all known each other since elementary school. It was his own fault that he’d been grouped with them, really. His actual study partner was out sick, but when the teacher asked whom he’d want to team up with, Tobias could only think of one person whose name he actually knew. 

Jake noticed him glancing his way and offered Tobias a warm smile, an easy, encouraging sort of expression that Tobias could never achieve. He looked to Rachel, saying, “It’s not like we don’t know where we’re going.” 

“I just don’t want Mrs. Chapman coming back here to babysit us,” Rachel countered. “And if Marco keeps failing at basic preschool tasks—” 

“Oh, my god,” Marco interrupted, standing up and spreading his arms wide, expression mockingly awestruck. “Look at that. All done. Are you going to stop whining now?” 

“Depends, are you going to keep sucking at life?” 

Standing beside Rachel, Tobias kept his face carefully still to mask his enjoyment of Rachel easily firing back at Marco in a way that Tobias could never manage. It wasn’t that Marco was intimidating – he was easily half a foot shorter than Tobias, with a petite stature that made him look a few years younger than he was – but his jokes always erred on the side of cruelty rather than kindness, even if he made them casually. His opinion of Tobias had been obvious from the first moment Tobias sat down with Jake at the lunch table and Marco joked, “You know, Jake, just because you save a puppy from the rain doesn’t mean you have to let it follow you home. Do you want rabies? Because that’s how you get rabies.” 

Jake had reached a hand out to smack him and Marco laughed, but that didn’t help the hurt feeling that had twisted in Tobias’ stomach, crushing the pitiful glimmer of hope that maybe he’d make some friends at this school after all. He’d only been there a week at that point and the only person to extend an olive branch had met him with his face two inches above a toilet. Marco might not have been trying to target Tobias like the other bullies, but Tobias knew what it looked like when friends constructed jealous fences. 

Marco rolled his eyes at Rachel and pushed past her, grabbing the packet of papers from Jake’s hand. “ _Fine_ ,” he said in a very poor British accent, making a show of opening the front page. “If _Queen Rachel_ wills it, we mere subjects will dutifully complete our task.” 

“Good,” Rachel replied, crossing her arms in front of her chest and smirking. “I’m glad to see you know your place, _peasant._ ” 

Marco barked a laugh, apparently approving of the comeback enough to let the quarrel end, and Jake and Cassie stepped forward to propel them all along the path once more. Further up, Tobias could see the group in front of them turn around a bend in the trail, the adult chaperone hanging back just long enough to see them following before moving on herself.

“Want to work together?” Rachel asked, and it took Tobias a few moments to realize she was talking to him. She held out her homework packet like a peace offering. 

Tobias managed a smile, something shaky and half-grown. He’d never spoken to Rachel before this, despite sharing a few classes; she was the type of person who seemed lit from within and Tobias never felt like he could compete. Ahead of them, Cassie and Jake chatted while Marco trailed a few steps behind, staring with bored eyes at the trees above. It made sense for Rachel to be part of their group, instead of lingering to walk with him, and yet she lingered.

It made him wonder if Rachel had ever felt like she existed as nothing more than a reflection. There were days when Tobias couldn’t block out that invisible feeling, like he was the idea of a person masquerading as the reality of one. 

Willfully setting his uncertainty aside, Tobias offered up his messy packet. “I don’t know how much help I’ll be.” 

“Puh- _lease_ ,” Rachel replied, shaking her head. “This thing? It’ll take five minutes of drawing leaves and looking up what trees are common in this forest in the encyclopedia. Easy day.”

“I thought the point was to ‘observe and record our natural surroundings’?” Tobias asked, reading directly from the instructions at the top. 

“The point of a hike is to enjoy it,” Rachel said. “Not to spend it buried in paperwork.” Her words were a proclamation, inviting no argument. She looked over at him and grinned, clearly seeing the amusement on his face. “You’re Tobias, right? I think we have math class together.” 

“Yeah, I just got here a month ago.” This was normally where he left it, but something about Rachel’s gaze made him want to keep her attention. Without knowing why, Tobias felt prompted to add, “Third school in two years. It’s been a blast.” 

“Oh, yeah?” Rachel asked. She’d given up all pretense of looking at the packet and stuck it rolled-up in her back pocket. “Parents travel a lot for work?” 

“No parents,” Tobias admitted. He felt raw in his openness, but his voice sounded flat and expressionless to his ears. “Just my aunt and uncle. They’re divorced, so…” 

He trailed off, suddenly embarrassed. He didn’t know how to explain his life as a game of hot potato and didn’t want to, not while Rachel was watching him. He felt like he wanted to impress her but had no idea how to manage it. 

Despite his worry, Rachel didn’t look like she was judging him.

“Yeah,” she said, meeting his eyes with a knowing stare. “Divorce. I get that.”

In that moment, Tobias felt hope spark anew, like it had when he met Jake. There was something about the Berenson cousins, apparently, that Tobias couldn’t help but desire to befriend. 

Unfortunately, life intervened before he could say anything more. 

“Uhh, guys?” Jake said. Tobias and Rachel looked over to see the other three stopped at the bend in the path. They stepped forward to stand with the group and stared in unison at the path ahead. 

“Where’s the rest of our class?” Marco asked, echoing what they all were thinking. 

The trail in front of them was completely empty. It wound through the trees, the idyllic picture of a peaceful fall day, like a Thomas Kincaid on the wall of the doctor’s office. The only thing missing was their fellow classmates and teachers. 

“There’s… there’s no way they got that far ahead,” Cassie said. She looked at the rest of them for support. “We weren’t walking that slow!” 

“This _is_ the same trail, right?” Jake asked. 

“Mrs. Chapman wouldn’t have let us get lost,” Rachel confirmed. She looked angry at her own confusion. “She was checking on us every two minutes, I swear.” 

“Well, where are they, then?” Marco asked. His tone was starting to get a slight panicky edge. “Did aliens beam them up to their ship? Because I’m not really seeing a good explanation here.” 

Privately, Tobias agreed, staring blankly at the silent path in front of them. The light seemed off somehow, and it took Tobias a few moments to figure out why. The shadows were wrong. He looked up at the sky and saw the sun hanging low in the sky, in the opposite direction of that morning. 

When he looked back down, Cassie was kneeling on the trail and frowning. “There aren’t even any footprints,” she muttered, brow knitted. “This doesn’t make any sense.”

While the rest of the group descended into increasingly worried whispers, Tobias found himself staring down the path. Roughly thirty yards away, the trail forked, with the left side leading into a shadowed thicket. 

He had no idea why, but his eyes kept being drawn to the dark path. It pulled at him, an unknown force keeping his attention pinned. If he concentrated, he could almost hear a voice whispering for him to come forward, but it spoke without sound in a language Tobias couldn’t fully grasp.

At his side, Rachel nudged his shoulder and tried to follow his gaze. “What are you looking at?” 

It took a few moments before Tobias felt able to speak. 

“I think it wants us to go there,” he said, voice hushed as he raised a hand to point at the leftward curving trail. The leaves of the trees rustled with a sudden wind, as if the forest agreed, and Tobias felt his conviction strengthen. 

The rest of their group fell silent, staring up at the trees with wide eyes and mixed expressions of wonder and worry.

Tobias heard words in his mind again, like a whisper on the wind. 

Quietly, he said, “It’s been waiting for us.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

**JAKE**

 

 

_When Jake was ten years old, his best friend Marco gave him a pipe._

_“It’s a tabor pipe!” he claimed, thrusting it at Jake with a wide grin on his face._

_Jake examined the pipe with interest. It was a long, hollow piece of wood with holes spaced evenly down its length. “It looks like a recorder.”_

_“No, see, it’s like that old story about the Pied Piper. Except it’s for animals,” Marco said. He faltered for a moment, biting his lip, and said, “At least, I think it’s for animals.”_

_“What’d it say on the box?” Jake asked. He placed the pipe to his mouth and tried to play a tune, missing the sudden look of consternation on Marco’s face. The music that emerged from the pipe was light and airy, like the tinkling of bells, and Jake pulled it away with wide eyes. “Oh, wow, is it automatic?”_

_“Sure,” Marco said, shrugging. Jake thought about asking further, but he got caught up in Marco’s excitement and let it go. They went down to the park and discovered that the tabor pipe really did seem to have the power to sway animals – or, at the very least, it lured the ducks at the pond into following Jake around. They were in the middle of seeing if it would work on squirrels when Marco’s mom stopped by and caught them in their fun._

_“Oh, no, Jake, you broke it,” she said. Jake couldn’t see where it was damaged, but Marco’s mom snatched the pipe from his hands anyway. He glanced over at Marco, who was inexplicably staring down at his shoes like he was embarrassed, but before Jake could ask, Marco’s mom said, “I’ll fix it and bring it back to you tomorrow, Jake, does that sound good? I’m afraid Marco needs to go home now.”_

_That was the last time Jake saw either the pipe or Marco’s mother._

_She vanished in the woods later that evening._

  

-

   

“Nope,” Marco declared in light of Tobias’ revelation. “Hard pass. Not happening.”

He turned to go back the way they came, only to stop short at the scene in front of him. Jake followed his gaze and gaped at the sight of trees blocking their way. The path now ended abruptly just behind Rachel and Tobias, leaving them standing in a tiny dirt clearing rather than the middle of a trail. The only way out was forward. 

Weakly, Jake said, “Well, now I suddenly know how Mario feels when he can’t retrace his steps.” 

Marco moved forward anyway, stepping into the brush and trying to push through the thicket, but each attempt was met with more obstructions. After a few false starts, he stepped back and stared at the mess of trees and bushes that faced them. His expression was surprisingly blank, but Jake could read the dawning horror in his eyes. 

“We really are trapped, aren’t we?” Cassie whispered behind him, voice unsteady. “It won’t let us go back.” 

“It wants us to follow the path,” Tobias repeated.

“What, and we’re just gonna do whatever the magical forest wants?” Rachel asked. When Jake glanced her way, he saw her glaring down the path, hands on her hips and jaw set like she was issuing a challenge. “No, I’m with Marco. Let’s hack our way out.” 

“How?” Marco asked. He hadn’t turned away from the newly grown trees, eyes darting to and fro as he tried to consider an alternative approach. “Every time I try anything, it just grows thicker. Are you hiding an axe I don’t know about? Because if so – well, okay, one: that’s awesome and terrifying and I would 100% expect it from you, but two: hand it over, let’s go.”

“Maybe if we both try?” Rachel suggested, ignoring the rest of his rant. She stepped forward and started mimicking Marco’s attempts to push through the woods. After two minutes, they were no closer to escape and the thick forest was starting in resemble an ivy wall. 

“It’s no use,” Jake said, frowning. 

“Ugh!” Rachel snarled, clearly frustrated. She kicked uselessly at a thick tree trunk. “How the hell—”

“It’s magic,” Tobias said. He was still standing in the middle of the path, a few feet away from the rest of them. His voice sounded kind of spacey, like he was daydreaming. “Or… something like that.”

Jake frowned at him. “What makes you say that?”

“Besides the obvious?” Rachel asked, raising an eyebrow. 

“Well, yeah,” Jake acknowledged, “but…”

He broke off before finishing the thought, but Cassie picked up on his intention. “What makes you so sure?” she asked Tobias, stepping forward to stand next to him. He kept staring down the path, head slightly tilted as though he was listening to a voice on the wind. 

“I don’t—,” Tobias began, knitting his brow. He looked confused. “I can’t explain it. It’s like someone is talking to me, but there aren’t any words. Just – I don’t know, I just know it wants us to follow the path on the left. I can feel it.”

“Does it feel evil?” Marco asked drily, finally abandoning his attempts to break through the blocked path. He wrapped his arms across his chest, staring suspiciously at the surrounding woods. “And if so, what level of evil? Are we talking demonic? Should we start chanting prayers now, or…?”

“No,” Tobias said. “It doesn’t feel dark or whatever, just – kind of weird, I guess.” He ran a hand through his thick sandy-blond hair, clearly frustrated by his failed attempts to explain it. “Look, just listen. Can’t you hear it?” 

They all fell silent, staring at the path before them with wary eyes. Jake tried not to let the eerie shadows distract him as he listened to the wind rustling through the trees and birds chirping deeper in the woods. For a moment, he felt like he could hear something – a lilting melody of notes, like a bells tinkling on the wind – but the music faded away as soon as he concentrated on it.

Jake frowned, trying to catch the tune again, but it was gone. He looked around at the others. Rachel looked as annoyed as he was, but Cassie’s brow was furrowed as if she was listening to a very distant conversation. Marco’s reaction was the most surprising. Jake had expected to see him scoffing and rolling his eyes at Tobias’ challenge, but instead he was staring up at the trees with quiet, wide-eyed alarm. He snapped back to attention as soon as he felt Jake’s gaze on him, but the damage had already been done. 

“You heard something, didn’t you?” Jake asked.

Marco went instantly on the defensive, shoulders tensing as he crossed his arms even tighter over his chest. “I heard every horror movie I’ve ever seen telling me to get the fuck out of this forest before I become its first victim,” he snapped, too rattled to be properly cutting. 

“I could kind of hear something,” Cassie said. Her voice was a soothing contrast to Marco’s acidity. “It sounded like bells.”

“You guys don’t hear a voice?” Tobias asked. He bit his lip nervously. Looking over at Marco, he asked, “What did you hear?” 

“It doesn’t matter, because this forest is clearly possessed,” Marco replied, but he wouldn’t meet Jake’s eyes, which meant that Marco had definitely heard more than he was willing to cop to. However, now that everyone’s attention was on him, Marco was having a harder time maintaining his mask. After a few seconds, he sighed and said, “ _Fine_ , I heard bells or whatever. They kind of sounded like words.”

“What’d they say?” Jake asked. 

Marco paused, looking away and clearly not wanting to say. But he seemed to have realized that he wasn’t going to get away with avoiding the answer, so he eventually said, “It was inviting us in. Like it’s been waiting for us.” 

They all fell silent after that, turning as one to face the empty path before them. A few scattered leaves danced lightly down the trail as a cool breeze blew past them, and on the wind Jake could nearly hear the sound of bells again. The shadows along the edges of the path grew deeper as the sun dipped lower in the sky, and Jake was suddenly struck by how late it was. Hadn’t it just been morning? 

“Okay, screw this,” Rachel said, eyes narrowed as she regarded the forest around them. “We can’t go back, and we’re getting nowhere just debating this. If the only way out of this forest is by going through it, then we’re just going to have to do it.”

“You’re supposed to stay in one place if you get lost, though,” Cassie protested, though it sounded half-hearted at best. She looked over at Jake. “What do you think?” 

The question was casual, but Jake suddenly felt the weight of everyone’s stare, like they were waiting for his call. Cassie was earnest alongside Rachel’s forced confidence, while Tobias looked on with a hesitant sort of hope in his eyes. It was clear that he wanted to investigate the mysterious voice. In contrast, Marco stared at the ground, discomfort evident in his stance. 

“We should vote on it,” Jake said. He stared at Marco as he said it, trying to gage his reaction, but Marco’s expression was muted when he looked up. Jake met Marco’s dark gaze for a moment before looking around at the others and prompting, “All in favor of checking it out?”

“Let’s do it,” Rachel said immediately.

Nearly as quickly, Tobias said, “Yes.” 

Cassie was a bit more hesitant, but she said, “If the forest is able to change around us like this, I don’t see how we have much choice.”

Finally, Jake looked back at Marco, who looked like he’d swallowed something unpleasant. Part of him thought Marco might argue more, given how stressed he looked, but instead Marco just rolled his eyes and said, “Okay, _fine_ , let’s go investigate, but when we get eaten alive by demons I reserve the right to say I told you so.”

“Noted,” Jake said, grinning despite the tense situation, and Marco’s shoulders lost a small amount of their tightness. Looking back at the others, Jake said, “Well, I guess that decides it.”

He turned to face the path, shaking off his nerves and steeling his shoulders. “Let’s go.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

**RACHEL**

 

_For all that Rachel had grown up loving weekend gymnastic meets and mall trips with her mother and sisters, she was coming to equally enjoy her Sunday afternoons exploring the forest with Cassie. At ten years old, they were finally old enough for Cassie’s parents to trust them in the woods by themselves, and they were taking full advantage of the freedom._

_“You’re going to ruin that shirt out here, you know,” Cassie called out, watching from on top of the steep hill that Rachel was trying to climb. Tree roots ran like lattice along the packed mud and rocks, and the right side was easily set up to accommodate adventurous explorers. Cassie had scrambled up the familiar path with ease._

_Rachel had chosen to take the path on the left, which was proving to be considerably trickier._

_“I am not,” Rachel replied as she judged the distance to the next root. If she braced her foot on the narrow sliver of rock jutting out just below it, she could make it. Probably. “Mother Nature doesn’t know who she’s messing with if she thinks I’m going to let her wreck my new shirt.”_

_“I feel like threatening Mother Nature is not the best idea when you’re on a hike, Rachel,” Cassie said, laughing at her. Cassie was not the type to care much about her clothes. In fact, Rachel could see a large mud stain on the knee of her jeans as Cassie let her legs dangle down the wall of roots._

_Rachel grinned up at Cassie, delighting in the feeling of adrenaline that spiked before her jump._

_“Mother Nature can bite me,” she joked, and then she leapt._

_-_

Tobias led the group as they made their way down the path. Scarcely twenty feet in, the path forked, its left side angling deeper into the shadows. Rachel couldn’t tell if there was a thicker canopy of leaves or if was just at a bad angle, but the setting sun didn’t seem to be able to pierce through the gloom on the leftward path. The light quickly dimmed as they walked.

She hated to admit it, but Rachel could feel her courage starting to slip. Not for the first time, she considered the option of going back to the blocked off path and just tearing at the trees until they could get through. 

She glanced over at Tobias, the only member of the group in front of her. He looked nervous, but there was a strange, excited gleam in his eyes, like the mystery of the leftward path was more compelling than any fear. 

Behind her, Rachel heard Marco murmur, “Okay, guys, remember: when the serial killer attacks, you just have to be faster than the other people around you.” 

Jake and Cassie laughed nervously at his poor joke, but Rachel just felt her resolve strengthen. If Tobias wasn’t scared, she sure as hell wasn’t. Especially not with Marco complaining every ten seconds. 

“We’ll be fine,” Rachel said, trying to force bravado into her voice. “Lack of light isn’t going to kill us.”

“It’s what’s hiding _in_ the darkness that I’m worried about,” Marco muttered, “but okay, whatever. Make sure to scream in terror if you get attacked, everyone.” 

More nervous laughter followed his quip, but no one seemed willing to continue the conversation. The path turned narrower as it grew darker, forcing them into a single-file path. Rachel kept a grip on Tobias’ shoulder and felt Cassie’s hand tighten around hers. The tree branches were ominous in the darkness, with just enough light to make out the elongated limbs and rustling leaves, weaving and grasping toward the sky. Worse, the ground grew more treacherous as they walked. Rachel couldn’t help her growing frustration as she was forced to keep switching between watching the forest and glancing down to make sure she wasn’t going to twist her ankle on an errant tree root. 

They walked slowly onward. If Rachel concentrated, she could _almost_ hear the faint twinkling of bells, but mostly the forest seemed ominously silent. Jake’s breathing was the loudest sound there. 

Rachel could feel the dark quiet grating at her nerves with every step. The seconds passed by like hours, each breath a mile, as the path dragged on and on. She felt ready to scream with frustration from the burning tension of it all, but before she could succumb to that desire, Tobias suddenly drew to a halt in front of her. 

“I think I see a light,” he said softly. In the dark silence, it was as loud as a shout. 

“Is it the sweet release of death?” Marco called up from the back of the group, his voice cracking slightly as he forced a joke. No one laughed. 

“We’ve only been walking for like two minutes, you’re _fine_ ,” Rachel snapped back, though the goosebumps on her arms belied her confident tone. In all honesty, she had no idea how long they’d been walking; logic dictated that it couldn’t be any longer than five minutes, but it _felt_ like an hour.

“Just keep going,” Jake ordered. Then, with a hint of desperation, he added, “Please.” 

Tobias started forward again, stepping carefully around the protruding tree roots. Rachel matched his pace, eyes tracking the path in front of them. She could see a faint light in the distance, growing warm and golden as they slowly approached. 

It was amazing how wonderful light felt after the darkness. 

Rachel felt so heartened by the fading shadows that she almost didn’t notice the snow beginning to fall. 

“What the hell—” Jake began.

Rachel stared around them as snow began to line the sides of the path. As the light grew brighter, the air turned cooler, and after a few more steps, Rachel realized she could see her breath.

“Is this actually happening?” Marco asked. Confusion seemed to have replaced his fear.

“There’s no way it could be snowing,” Cassie said. “It’s barely October.”

“October?” Marco repeated, incredulous. “Who cares that it’s October? We live in _southern California_ , it doesn’t snow here _period_.”

“Is that weird bell thing still talking to you, Tobias?” Jake asked. His brown hair was quickly getting layered with snowflakes. 

“Not really,” Tobias called back. As it grew colder, his gaze slowly lost its enchanted expression, leaving him looking much more uncertain. Snowflakes glittered in his blond hair, reflecting the light ahead. “But I think we’re almost there.”

Ahead of them, the path appeared to end at the mouth of a clearing layered in snow. From what she could see, the light looked like normal sunlight, gleaming off the white snow and streaming through the bare tree branches. Rachel resisted the urge to stop short when she realized the leaves were gone from the trees. When had that happened? Why was she just now noticing it?

It was like her life had been hijacked by magic, and she was not a fan. Hot anger curled up in her stomach, stark against the cold air outside, and Rachel forcefully swallowed it back. 

“ _Good_ ,” she snapped, voice sharp despite her efforts to quell her irritation. “Let’s go figure out who the hell decided to force this stupid detour on us.” 

They quickly traversed the last stretch of the path and arrived in a clearing surrounded by a mix of plump pine and bare oak trees. The snow layered the ground completely, undisturbed in all directions across the open space, but it barely went past the tread on her shoes as Rachel stepped cautiously into the clearing. The trees were dappled perfectly with fallen snowflakes, creating such a striking image that Rachel had the faint impression of being trapped in a holiday card. 

“Are we in Narnia right now?” Marco asked behind her, incredulous. “Is a giant lion going to attack us or something?” 

Cassie glanced over at him. “You’ve never actually read those books, have you?” 

“I pretty much just remember something about talking lions from the picture book adaptations of them,” Marco admitted. 

Rachel glanced at Jake, who shrugged in mutual confusion, and she opted to change the topic. “Well, wherever we are, it’s _freezing_ and I’m starting to get pissed about our forced vacation into winter wonderland. Are you hearing anymore magical music, Tobias?” 

Tobias wasn’t listening. 

He had stepped out a bit further than the others, standing near the center of the meadow, and was staring intensely at a collection of pine trees on the other side. Rachel followed his gaze through the light snowfall, trying to see what was so interesting about a random group of trees, when she abruptly figured out what had grabbed his attention. 

A blue centaur stood just beyond the trees, with slim arms and two stalk eyes perched above a relatively humanlike face. It had no mouth, but all four eyes were locked directly on them. 

<Welcome,> a voice suddenly rang in her head. The creature didn’t move an inch, but Rachel somehow knew it was the one speaking, even though there had been no sound. <I’ve been waiting for you.>

  

 

* * *

 

 

**CASSIE**

 

 

_Cassie was four years old the first time she sensed something from nothing._

_She clutched a raggedy stuffed fox in one arm, standing outside her parents’ bedroom door. Her fist looked very small as she knocked three times, a quiet rap-rap-rap that echoed in the stillness of the night._

_Her dad came to the door after a long moment of shuffling behind the door, yawning and blinking down at her with sleepy eyes. “Cassie, sweetie, what’s wrong? Are you okay?” He knelt down to face her directly, scanning for signs of sickness._

_“Daddy, the doggie is trying to fight Mr. Hawk again,” Cassie said. She could see it clearly in her mind’s eye, a caged bird trying to flare its wings despite its confinement as an evil-eyed dog circled, keen eyes looking for a way past the cage._

_“Oh, Cassie,” her dad sighed. “It’s just a nightmare, sweetie—”_

_“No, it’s not!” she insisted. “They’re fighting! The doggie is going to hurt him and Mr. Hawk can’t get away! We have to go save him!” Her lower lip wobbled as she felt hot tears well up in her eyes, the image of a dead hawk dashed across the barn floor fresh in her mind._

_“Okay, okay, there’s no need to cry,” her dad said, picking her up and swiftly ushering her back to her room. “I’ll go check on Mr. Hawk for you, okay, sweetie? I’ll make sure he’s okay. Don’t you worry, Cassie, it’ll be okay.”_

_He tucked her back into bed, blankets warm and inviting, and it didn’t take long for sleep to drag her back down again. She didn’t dream anymore that night._

_The next morning, her dad regaled her mom with the story of catching a wild hyena in the barn, intent on finding an easy supper, and they both wondered with fond bemusement how Cassie could have possibly known. She probably just heard a noise, they assumed, and left it at that._

_Until it happened again._

  

-

  

For a long moment, the group stared at the strange creature in silence, frozen by surprise. The centaur seemed to realize that he had startled them and didn’t move, watching them with equal intensity. He had four eyes, Cassie suddenly realized, noting a pair of green eyes rotating on stalks atop his head, which she had initially mistaken for horns. Stalk eyes and a mouthless face, with a human-like torso attached to a horse body.

_No_ , she thought, taking in the centaur’s graceful form. _More like a deer._ His legs were long and delicate, an effect mirrored in his arms and neck, and Cassie could nearly imagine him bounding through the snow with a dancer’s trot. 

The most alarming part of the centaur, however, was a long tail ending in a sharp curved blade. Whatever this creature was, he was clearly not a prey species. 

Suddenly, the centaur stumbled. He fell forward, perching awkwardly on his front legs and leaning heavily on his side. Cassie could see a dark, hideous gash across his left flank, its edges blackened and bloody, and she was springing forward before she could think any further. 

“He’s hurt,” Cassie said, not caring if anyone followed. Years of work at her family’s rehabilitation center had trained her movements, and she was kneeling in the snow beside the centaur in a matter of moments. “What happened?”

<There isn’t time,> the centaur replied, his soundless voice echoing with a waver of pain. <I need your help.>

“If you tell me what happened, I can try to treat you,” Cassie explained, examining the wound. It looked even worse close up, starting at his underside rib cage and deeply cutting through his flank. The edges were blackened and curled, like it had been cut with a hot knife, and tendrils of black extended out from the wound in a root pattern. She stared at the injury in confusion. She had treated infection in animals before, but the black branches looked like nothing she’d ever encountered. It felt _wrong_. 

“Oh, that’s—” Cassie heard Marco’s voice behind her, sounding choked by disgust—“That is not right. Oh, gross.” 

“No time for what?” Jake asked the centaur. Glancing away from the wound, Cassie could see the rest of the group gathered around them. Rachel was hovering just behind Cassie, ready to help, while Jake, Tobias, and Marco stood in front of the centaur. 

“And what did you mean, you’ve been waiting for us?” Tobias asked. He stared at the creature with wonder in his eyes. 

<My time is short,> the centaur said, breathing heavily from his injury. <There is a great evil here, and we are outnumbered— I knew we needed help, so I reached out as best I could. The Greywaren—> 

He cut off with a choking breath. As Cassie watched, his injury seemed to throb, fresh blood welling up from the deep gash, and the tendrils of black quivered and spread further along his side. Cassie swallowed down an urge to recoil at the sight, an unnatural wariness creeping along her skin. 

“You were attacked?” Rachel asked. She sounded angry. 

“We can help,” Cassie said, desperately trying to latch onto something familiar. She turned and said, “Jake, Marco, give me your jackets— we can tear them into strips for bandages—” 

<No!> the centaur cut in. Cassie’s hands froze just above his flank, hearing the desperation in his tone. <There is no time. There is a great evil coming and I need your help. My brother is missing.> 

“What?” Jake asked. “Your brother?” 

“Who are you?” Tobias added, radiating concern. 

“ _What_ are you?” Marco muttered. 

<My name is Elfangor-Sirinal-Shamtul, and I am a guardian of this forest,> Elfangor said. <My people— the Andalites— we are protectors of this land. For a long time, we’ve been fighting against a demon horde. We fought to a standstill, but now—> He stopped, shuddering as his wound pulsed again— <The enemy has developed a new base and their leader has attacked again. My brother and I were separated, and the demon followed me. I— I don’t have much time. I need your help to stop them.> 

Silence followed Elfangor’s statement as they exchanged glances. The entire thing felt unreal, like they had been horribly miscast in some supernatural teen drama. But the visceral image of the dying creature in front of her made reality sit heavy in her stomach. Cassie felt vaguely nauseas, watching as dark tendrils crept further out from Elfangor’s wound. 

“What can we do?” Jake asked. Cassie could hear the underlying note of incredulity: _what on Earth could five teenagers possibly do to help?_  

<There is more to you than you know,> Elfangor said. <You heard my call. There is magic in your souls.> 

“Answering a magical voicemail doesn’t mean we’re capable of fighting _demons_ ,” Marco snapped, tone edged with hysteria. He looked like he was trying to stare at anything but the gaping wound on Elfangor’s side.

<I— I can help you,> Elfangor said. Even though his words were voiceless, Cassie could feel him fading in and out, like a radio station with a weak signal. <Take my hand and I can give you protection. You can shield your spirits by adopting animal forms. I can give you that gift. Please. I need you to save my brother.>

Cassie looked at the others, uncertainty freezing her movements. No one seemed to know what to say, but they could all feel the pressure mounting. 

“We have to help,” Tobias said, voice hushed. “His brother could be hurt.” 

“What the hell can we do?” Marco replied, though with much less conviction. “Do you see what that demon did to him?” 

Without missing a beat, Rachel snapped back, “Of course we need to help!” 

“Stop fighting,” Jake cut in, though it sounded more like an old habit than anything else. He kept staring at Elfangor, brow furrowed, and asked, “How can we possibly fight the demon? If it can do _that—_ ” 

Cassie grimaced, looking back at the wound. “Maybe we could get you out of here,” she suggested. “My parents treat animal wounds all the time, they could get you stabilized—” 

<My brother will help you, if you can save him,> Elfangor said. His thought-speech was even more faded than before. <Please. We don’t have time. The demons won’t stop with this world— they will devour everything in their path. If you choose to help, it must be now.> 

“ _Please_ ,” Tobias insisted, turning to Jake with pleading eyes. “We have to do something.”

With a determined expression, Rachel said, “Let’s do it.” 

Cassie found herself steeling herself with clenched fists. The sight of the grisly, unnatural wound in Elfangor’s side filled her with terror, but a stronger part of her thought, _his brother is alone out there and needs help. We can help him_. She nodded at Jake, not trusting herself to speak. 

Jake took in their faces and then looked to Marco, who stared back with uncertainty clear in his eyes. He crossed his arms against the fear, lips twisting into a grimace as he caught sight of the wound again, and muttered, “Okay, for the record, when I was talking about demons, I didn’t _actually_ mean it seriously. I mean, what the hell. This is insane.” 

Jake huffed out a weak laugh. He clearly must have heard more in Marco’s response than Cassie did, because he turned to Elfangor and said, “Okay, we’ll help. What do you need us to do?” 

Elfangor held out his hand, six long fingers extended out to them. As one, they reached back to him and brushed their skin against his. 

Without warning, Cassie was hit with a vision— 

_A lake in the forest, encircled by rocky cliffs._

_Dark shadows surrounding a gushing waterfall, masking the entrance to a cave._

_Green eyes staring at her from a mouthless face._

—and she staggered, stumbling away from them and falling to her knees. 

“Cassie!” Jake said, alarmed. 

She looked up and saw the others standing there, staring at her with startled expressions. Across the way, Tobias seemed to have stumbled back as well, but Marco caught him by the arm and he stayed upright. 

“Did you see that?” Cassie asked, eyes wide. “The lake—” 

Before anyone could respond, Elfangor shuddered and crumpled lower to the ground. His stalk eyes twisted to stare behind him into the forest. <The demon— he’s coming. Quickly, you must go!> 

Cassie scrambled to her feet at the terror in his voice, feeling it rattle down to her bones. 

<You can use your animal spirit to hide! Concentrate on your inner self and it will emerge,> Elfangor said, rattling off instructions with rapid desperation. He twisted where he lay until all four eyes were staring at the forest behind him. <Hurry, you must leave me! Get to the river! He is coming!> 

In the end, Cassie couldn’t be sure which one of them broke first. Maybe it was her. All she knew was that suddenly they were running, scrambling for the tree line on the other side of the meadow. 

In her mind, she heard echoes of Elfangor’s terrible warning.

_He is coming_. 

She ran faster.

 

 

 

 

 


	2. PART TWO

 

 

 

 

 

**TOBIAS**

 

 

They scrambled through the snow with single-minded fear snapping at their heels. Rachel and Jake led the way, cutting a path through the snow for the rest. All the while, Tobias could hear Elfangor’s voice in his head, impossibly loud and compelling. 

_He is coming he is coming heiscoming—_  

They made it to a patch of thickly lined pine trees, located as far from Elfangor as they could. It was opposite where they first entered the clearing, but as Tobias thought of it, he realized he could no longer tell where that place was. He scrambled behind the nearest pine tree and found himself kneeling in the snow beside Rachel and Cassie. 

“Our tracks are going to lead it right to us!” Marco hissed as he ducked behind Jake, who had found a second pine tree five feet away. He stayed in a crouch, like he was preparing to run again. 

“No,” Tobias corrected, frowning. He abruptly realized why he couldn’t figure out their entry point. “Look, our tracks from before are gone.” 

As he said it, Tobias saw the freshly trampled snow slowly begin to fix itself. It looked like small gusts of wind were trailing the path of their terrified dash, erasing the evidence of their existence. 

“Okaaaay,” Jake whispered. He knelt behind his tree and watched the clearing with apprehension, his jeans growing dark with melted snow. “Maybe it won’t see us, then?” 

It was a hopeful thought, but Tobias found himself having trouble believing it. Goosebumps rippled across his arms as the air grew colder, reminding Tobias of the woefully inadequate clothes they were all wearing. He hadn’t expected to need more than his threadbare t-shirt and jeans for their hike, but now his hands felt like ice. 

A gust of wind blew sharply through the trees as the valley was cast in shadow, and Tobias felt dread mount in his heart. 

He stared at Elfangor lying motionless across the clearing. An insane part of him wanted to jump up and rush to his side again, demon be damned, but just as he thought it, a voice echoed in his mind. 

<No, Tobias,> Elfangor said, in a weak whisper meant just for him. Tobias didn’t know how he knew that, but no one else reacted when he glanced around to check. <It is not your time.>

In the midst of the freezing wind, Tobias felt a sudden warmth envelope his heart. He looked back over at Elfangor and found the strange centaur staring back at him with all four eyes. 

_How do you know my name?_ Tobias thought, but Elfangor didn’t respond. 

Tobias thought of their meeting, of Elfangor’s promise that they all had magic in their souls, and recalled the strange vision he received when Elfangor touched his hand. 

_A hillside of trees flashed across his vision like an endless sea of green. He flew overhead, sun warm against his feathers and air light under his wings, sharp eyes gazing down on a flower-filled meadow._

_A blonde girl stood extending a hand out to Elfangor, smile dancing in her eyes._

_“I thought my vision was a dream,” she said, laughing. Her voice sounded warm and familiar, though Tobias had never met her before._

_< It’s possible it is both,> Elfangor replied._

_The world twisted, and Tobias found himself standing on the edge of a lake, muddy grass tickling his toes. The lake was eerily calm, and its surface reflected the sky with mirrored distinction._

_When Tobias looked in the lake, the reflection of a hawk stared back at him._

_< It is in your heart,> Elfangor’s voice whispered. <You must focus on who you are.>_

_Tobias could see feathers on his arms and talons across his feet._

_< You must save the Greywaren.>_

The entire clearing seemed to shudder, breaking Tobias from his daze, and the momentary warmth of Elfangor’s vision fled as the demon approached. 

Cassie gasped beside him as they all caught sight of the darkness emerging from the trees behind Elfangor. It drifted along the ground in sinuous circles before slowly beginning to coalesce into a discernable shape. Tobias’ heart sank as he realized it was adopting a mockery of Elfangor’s form, except its version was nothing but a twisted dark void, like staring into an absence of space rather than a separate creature. The demon eyes were red where Elfangor’s were green, and they gleamed in the blackness like cat’s eyes reflecting light.

<It’s too far to run this time, _Prince_ Elfangor, > the demon hissed, making Tobias and the others wince. Like Elfangor, its voice didn’t make a sound, but it felt like nails across the chalkboard of his mind.

A hand clenched his shoulder. When Tobias looked, he saw Rachel glaring at the demon and looking impossibly brave, her knuckles white as they dug into his shirt.

<You will not get this world, Visser Three,> Elfangor snapped, dragging Tobias’s attention back to the horrifying scene in front of them. He spoke bravely, but Tobias could feel the wavering strength in his tone. <We will stop you.> 

Visser Three laughed, and it echoed like shattering glass. <You think your people can stand against my army? Your warriors grow weaker by the day, and every loss for you is a gain for me. And once I’ve devoured their precious Prince, the Andalites will crumble under our might even faster.> 

<There is more to this world than you know,> Elfangor promised. 

<Do you mean the outsiders?> Visser Three asked. 

Elfangor didn’t respond, but his presence in their minds was edged with sudden fear. 

Visser Three loomed closer to Elfangor, and Tobias could see that his hooves were clouded with wispy black tendrils. They reached out and wrapped around Elfangor’s body, slowly at first and then with growing precision. Tobias could almost feel the sharp stabs of pain where the demonic tendrils touched him as the wounds echoed faintly from Elfangor’s mind.

<You think I don’t know that you’ve brought creatures from the other world here to face me?> Visser Three asked, sharply victorious. Tobias’s stomach clenched in fear as he realized the demon was talking about _them_.  <Your dreamland can only hide them for so long. After I finish with you, I will bring each of them to judgment before our Greywaren, and they will feed our army further.>

<The Greywaren—> Elfangor began. His thought-speak sounded increasingly desperate as he was swallowed by the darkness.

<The Greywaren is ours,> Vissor Three crowed. <And now, so are you.>

With that declaration, Visser Three’s adopted form began to shudder, like he could no longer contain the surging mass within. More black tendrils whipped out and surrounded Elfangor, wrapping tighter and tighter around his motionless form until he was nearly covered. 

Elfangor screamed in their minds, pain emanating from his thoughts. 

_<_ You must change!> Elfangor commanded them, words reverberating sharply across their minds. As he died, Tobias suddenly saw a flash of an image: a sleek, powerful hawk, beak sharp and eyes vicious, staring at him like he had been judged and found wanting. < _The river—!_ > 

“R-run!” Jake stammered, voice shaking even as he clamored to his feet. 

“This way!” said Rachel, leading the way. She pulled Tobias and Cassie to their feet, and Tobias found himself running before he could process the image he’d seen. 

“We have to change!” Tobias said, echoing Elfangor’s instruction. He had no idea what that meant, and it was clear that everyone was similarly lost. But they were up and running, skirting through trees and trying not to succumb to the terror of the demon behind them. 

Cassie figured it out first, barely keeping pace alongside him. Her face bulged out, gray fur rippling across brown skin, and she suddenly fell to all fours as paws replaced her hands and feet. Rachel and Jake, leading the pack, followed shortly after, and Tobias saw their hair turning brown and orange respectively. Tobias couldn’t see Marco, but he heard the thump of his footsteps grow heavier with each passing second. 

Behind them, Tobias could still hear Visser Three laughing as he devoured Elfangor whole. 

He forced himself to focus past his fear, the image of the hawk distinct in his mind. Without warning, feathers layered his arms and legs. Tobias found himself twisting and falling, but before he could hit the ground, his wings whipped out and caught the air, pushing him up and over the trees. His eyes could pick out every single branch and pine needle. The cold air whipped across his feathers. As he crested above the tree line, Tobias could see the forest stretch on for miles.

Below him, a collection of animals was clamoring through the woods. Everyone knew they had to get away, get to the river, but as Tobias stared at the others he realized that they had no idea where to go. 

He was the only one who could see clearly.

<Veer to the left!> Tobias told them, eying a patch of forest that looked impossibly green and dense. As he shifted in that direction, he could feel warm air lifting him higher, and the quiet part of his brain still clinging to sanity whispered, _how can the weather change so quickly?_

But Tobias shoved the thought aside. He could worry about rationality when they were safe.

<Toward the water!> he instructed. <Hurry!> 

He flew on ahead, trusting them to follow, and felt the darkness drop away behind him.

 

 

* * *

 

 

**CASSIE**

 

 

Cassie tore through the brush, the snow under her paws slowly fading away the further she ran. The world had morphed into a cacophony of scents, bombarding her with too much information to handle. She could smell every tree and bush, every bird and bunny, and it was like being hit with an explosion of color after a life in the dark. She could sense everyone else around her, forms twisting from human into strange new animals, and she wanted to stop and marvel at this amazing new ability. _I’m a wolf! This is insane!_  

The fear kept her running. 

The demon was still back there. She could _smell_ it. 

<There’s a river coming up on your left,> Tobias said. She could see him in dim flashes overhead, her wolf eyes less useful for things in the sky. He had turned into some kind of large bird, but her vision wasn’t good enough to determine the type. <Maybe three hundred feet?> 

<Head to the river!> Jake commanded. He leapt past Cassie on the right, a tiger out of place in a common forest. 

She could hear Rachel and Marco running behind them, loud and graceless in forms less suited for speed. Dead leaves crunched under her paws as she ran. She could smell autumn on the air. 

_It was just winter_ , Cassie thought. _This is impossible_.

_So is being a wolf_ , her brain unhelpfully added, and Cassie abandoned that line of thinking. There was too much to deal with right now. They would all be devoured if they stopped to wonder _how_ any of this was possible, even if Cassie stayed mystified by the wonders of this strange new world. 

She veered toward the left, darting between trees as she raised her snout to scent the river, its water fresh in the air. They were approaching quickly, and Cassie dared to hope. If they could make it to the water, maybe they could find a place to hide. At the very least, they could wash their scent away. 

She recalled her vision of the hidden space behind the waterfall. Maybe that’s what it was trying to show her. Half the time her visions came with little rhyme or reason, but maybe— if they could make it there in time— she could help them survive. 

Just as she thought that, Tobias called out, <Guys, the sky’s getting dark— I think it’s coming, the de—ahh!>

A loud screech sounded overhead as Tobias cut off.

_Oh_ , Cassie thought with numb horror as she ran deeper into the forest. _He’s a hawk_. 

<Tobias!> Rachel cried out. She and Marco were even further back than before, unable to keep pace with Cassie and Jake, but Cassie could hear Rachel pounding through the brush with increasing speed. 

<Keep going to the river!> Jake said. 

<It just attacked Tobias!> Rachel snapped. <We need to fight back!>

Cassie kept running, terror clenching her heart as she saw blackness racing across the forest floor. It spread like vines, like a virus, the black tendrils grasping and choking any life it could find. Cassie saw it overtake a bush in front of her, growing like rot at an alarming pace, and she narrowly dodged a strike when the blackness rose up against her. 

A tendril caught the edge of her foot, shocking her with pain, but Cassie jerked her paw and broke free, stumbling as she frantically tried to regain her pace. The river was just ahead. She could see it now, the slope of the land as it edged into the water. 

<I can see the river!> Cassie called out. <Hurry!> 

A roar bellowed behind her, and Rachel snarled, <These stupid shadow demons keep getting in the way!> 

<Tobias!> Jake said. He had fallen back as Cassie ran forward, snapping at the demonic growths as they tried to snatch at him. <Say something! Everyone, to the river!> 

<I can’t get through!> Marco shouted.

<I’m here!> Tobias said. He suddenly whipped in front of Cassie, his body too large to fit comfortably between the trees, and he veered awkwardly to avoid low hanging branches. <It only grazed me. Cassie and I are at the river, we need to go—!> 

<Get in!> Jake snapped. <Rachel! Marco!>

<On my way!> Rachel replied. A heavy crashing sound followed her response, but Cassie could smell her getting closer. Cassie leapt into the water, immediately feeling the current beginning to drag her away. In the dim light, she watched as the demonic tendrils reached the edge of the water and stopped like they had hit a barrier.

<The water blocks them!> Cassie said. <Hurry!> 

She tried to swim against the current, wanting to make sure everyone made it, but the water was too strong. Cassie could only watch as she was pulled further and further from the bank. 

<I’m trying to—aghhh!> Marco cried, the farthest back of them all. 

<Marco!> Jake shouted, desperate.

Agonized screaming was the only response. 

As the current swept her away, Cassie saw a giant grizzly bear reach the bank and pause, turning toward the forest. The water swept her under for a moment, but when she re-emerged the bear was still waiting there, swiping at patches of darkness emerging from the forest. 

<Rachel!> she cried out, fighting anew against the current. 

<Jake!> Rachel shouted. <Hurry!>

<Get in the water!> Jake snapped back. <I’m going after Marco!> 

<No—!> 

<Rachel!> Tobias said, pleading. <Get in the river!> 

<GO!> Jake bellowed.

The water swept over Cassie again, dragging her into darkness. She choked on it, disoriented as she tried desperately to find her way back to the surface. The rushing water battered her ceaselessly, driving her deeper down into the depths. The lack of air ached in her chest as she fought against the current, and she could feel her movements start to slow. 

_I’m going to escape demons only to be killed by the river_ , Cassie mused, her senses numb as she began to fade out. The irony burned along with her lungs. 

Suddenly, she was falling. She gasped for a quick breath of air as the water pounded around her, and hit the water again in a rush. For a moment she was pinned under the force of the water, world spinning dizzily around her, but she fought against it with a fevered pitch. She could feel mud beneath her paws and used it to pull herself out from the torrent of pressure.

Her brain was beginning to black out again before she burst through the surface of the water, gasping. For a long while she bobbed in the water, paws paddling awkwardly as she simply tried to keep her head up. No longer under assault, she focused only on the sweet air in her lungs, waiting as her panic faded away. 

She was alive. It was impossible, but she was alive.

<Cassie?> asked a voice. 

Cassie blinked water from her eyes, slowly emerging from her stupor, and looked around at her surroundings for the first time. She was floating in a small lake, spinning slowly along with a gentle current. There was a waterfall at the other side of the lake, pouring water in a constant wave, and when Cassie looked, she could see a narrow opening at the other side where the river continued. Cassie was bobbing in a patch of relatively calm waters, slowly being pushed toward the exit. Rock walls surrounded the lake, casting the entire area into shadow.

It was the lake in her vision, Cassie realized with a start. She stared at the waterfall in wonder. A glimmer of color caught her eye, and Cassie glanced up to see an assortment of fish – actual _fish_ , with scales and gills and fins – swimming through the air like water. A black speckled koi came close enough for Cassie to see its gills pumping as though it was still in the lake. 

<How the _hell_ —?> she began, but found herself unable to complete the question. 

<Yeah, I’ve got nothing on the weird flying fish,> the voice said, and Cassie tore her gaze away to stare at the shore.

There were a few narrow embankments at the far side of the lake, just wide enough to house a couple small boulders. A huge grizzly bear climbed laboriously out of the lake and slumped next to one of them, fur sodden with water. Its black eyes stared at her as it breathed heavily. As Cassie stared, a red-tailed hawk flew down and perched on the boulder beside it.

<Tobias?> Cassie thought back, abruptly coming back to the moment. She looked back at the bear. Tentatively, she asked, <Rachel?>

<Let’s never do that again,> Rachel replied in lieu of a greeting.

Cassie began to paddle over to them, grateful that she didn’t have to fight the current to steer in their direction. Her limbs shook as she climbed onto the bank and collapsed near Rachel, leaning weakly against her massive flank.

<The others?> Cassie asked. She could dimly remember Marco crying out. He and Jake were nowhere to be seen. 

<No idea,> Rachel replied, her miserable tone laced with anger. 

<We’ll find them,> Tobias said, with enough hesitation that Cassie suspected he wasn’t convinced of his own optimism. He examined their surroundings with nervous energy. <This place seems safe enough for now, but I’m not sure where we are.>

With effort, Cassie managed to lift her head and look at the waterfall again. The wall of water obscured her vision, masking any telltale shadows, and she asked Tobias, <Can you see an opening behind the waterfall?> 

Tobias tilted his head at her, his movements so intensely birdlike that Cassie felt a sudden urge to laugh. She swallowed it down as Tobias turned to examine the area in question. After a moment, he replied, <There might be, yeah. Why?> 

<Because,> Cassie said, wearily climbing to her feet, <I think I know where we are.>

 

 

* * *

 

 

**MARCO**

 

 

Marco woke to the feeling of being dragged. 

For a long moment, he couldn’t place what had happened. His body felt too heavy to be real, limbs lanky and oversized, and every bump against the ground only served to rattle him further. He blinked, hazy and slow, and saw black shapes above him, grappling him at every juncture and pulling him along the cold ground.

<No,> he protested weakly, wincing with every movement. 

The shapes hustled him along, uncaring. 

He began to remember in bits and pieces, pain a constant distraction from his thoughts. Elfangor’s voice, telling them to run to the river; Rachel’s bear form running in front of him, the others too far ahead to see; the sudden, sickening realization that he was surrounded. He must have passed out when they attacked him. 

_And now what?_  

Marco remembered Visser Three promising to find them and take them to— 

No. 

It wasn’t possible. 

Whatever Visser Three had planned, Marco knew without a doubt he did not want to be a part of it. He struggled against his captors again, but they accommodated every movement without wavering in their grip. He exhausted himself within a minute, already injured and in too much pain to force anymore of it. 

Marco stared at the ground, overwhelmed by the mere strain of lifting his head. The snow was gone, replaced by a layer of orange and yellow leaves. Either they had brought him back in time while he was passed out, or the seasons were changing again. 

He’d seen this before, Marco realized, thoughts numb with pain. Not quite like this, and certainly not this terrifying, but this world, this _particular_ strangeness— 

_“Okay, Marco, do you see this?” his mother asked, holding out her hand. On one finger perched a butterfly with large, luminescent wings that changed color as often as he blinked. “Look at how it shines.”_

_“Cool,” Marco said, reaching out. The butterfly fluttered to his palm and sat calmly, its silken wings gently swaying in the wind. The wings turned orange as he watched, then yellow._

_“Now it’s your turn to make something,” his mother said. They were sitting beneath an impossibly large banyan tree, leaning against its thick, twisting roots and enjoying a warm fall day. The valley surrounding the tree stretched for nearly a mile all around in waves of flowers and grass before meeting the tree line. The roots of the tree stretched to cover nearly half the space, digging deep into the ground._

_Marco couldn’t remember how long they’d been playing. It felt like forever._

_“My turn?” Marco frowned. “But it’s not my dream.”_

_“It’s not my dream either,” she replied. “This place is real, sweetheart. It’s a world for dreamers like us. Our secret, special place.” She knitted her brow in concentration, gesturing gently with one hand, and a collection of flowers suddenly twisted and took to the air like birds. Marco stared as they flapped away in the sky, eyes wide, and his mother said, “We can share our dreams here, see?”_  

A particularly sharp jolt on the ground shook Marco from his thoughts, and he gasped from the sudden agony that rippled down his spine. The demons’ attacks had burned like electricity when they took him down, leaving him feeling frayed and fried. Even his gorilla form had been no match for them when they converged on him, no longer distracted by four other targets. 

Marco hoped the others had gotten away. 

He hadn’t thought it was possible to enter the dream world through a real forest. When his mother was alive to teach him, she had shown him the entrance through his own dreams, and they’d only had their lessons when they were asleep.

Marco hadn’t visited the dream world since she died. He stayed in his own dreams and endured the nightmares alone. But he’d seen the trees reshaping themselves on the path and felt a twinge of recognition. Stepped into the snowy meadow and remembered the feeling of dream magic against his skin. He had no idea what sort of creature Elfangor was— an Andalite?— but Marco only needed one look to know that he was made of dreams. The whole world was teeming with the same enchantment.

Except for the demons. 

Nothing Marco had ever seen could come close to the twisted sense of _wrong_ that Visser Three invoked. He’d gone through nightmares aplenty in the wake of his mother’s death, full of dark forests teeming with terrifying slithering creatures ready to tear him limb from limb. He had dreamed of zombies trying to rip his throat out, monsters reaching to tear him asunder, and fires burning him alive, but it was all the same magic. 

The demons corrupted the dream, like cutting away at a loaf of bread and watching it crumble into rot and maggots.

Even now, the demons holding him made Marco’s skin crawl. Their grips were firm and unyielding, yet they felt slimy to the touch. They didn’t fit in this world. It had not been designed for demons. 

“ _This place is real, sweetheart. It’s a world for dreamers like us.”_

Marco stared at the ground as he was dragged along, the memory sharp in his mind. 

This was her dream world. It was her forest. He could feel it in his bones.

But the secret world had been invaded. 

The realization lit a fire in his belly, like his strength was just waiting for him to admit it. As the demons pulled him up to a crest in the hill, Marco braced himself for another fight. He had no idea if his dream magic would work in this form – or if it could still work with the demons distorting it – but he wasn’t about to just sit still and let himself be devoured by the darkness. 

However, just as he was about to strike, Marco glanced up and froze at the sight in front of him. 

The demons had dragged him to the edge of an vast swamp encircled by a dense and hilly forest. The rim of the swamp was infested with demons of all different shapes and sizes, swarming like bugs on the underside of a rock. Some were broad and covered with sharp blades, which they used for chopping at young trees and tearing them up from the ground. Others slithered like worms or walked like regular people, but none of them resembled Elfangor the way Visser Three had. Maybe that form was for him alone. 

But mass of demons wasn’t what drew Marco’s attention. 

At the center of the swamp stood an enormous banyan tree. It loomed over the sludgy waters, branches spreading wide enough to cover half the valley in shadow. Its roots dug into the ground at its base for hundreds of feet in every direction, curving around each other as they anchored the tree into the swamp. 

Marco could almost pick out the exact place where he and his mother would sit for their lessons. It was difficult to know for sure, however, because the swamp had not existed before. The green valley of his memories was replaced by black, oily waters, which rippled as though shapes were moving beneath its surface. Nearly all the roots were buried under the water and blackened with rot. 

The banyan tree was dying.

It was obvious even from a distance. The roots were twisted and shriveled, some even broken away from the tree and left to drown alone in the black water. Dark tendrils had crept up the trunk, some reaching out into the branches and choking the life from the thick canopy of leaves that decorated its top. The tree looked like a shadow of its former self, fighting uselessly against its encroaching death. 

As Marco stared, he caught sight of something vastly different from the banyan tree of his memories. The roots at the base of the tree had restructured themselves along the side of the tree, facing away from the direction of Marco and his captors. The roots looked like a steep set of stairs leading up from the swamp, where an elaborate throne was cut into the base. 

Marco could just barely make out a humanoid figure seated on the throne, motionless and cast in shadow. His heart stopped, breath catching in his throat. _Could it be—?_

The throne was too far away to be sure. It could be anyone.

But Visser Three had said Greywaren, and Marco only ever knew one person by that title.

_“Mom, why do they call you that?” Marco asked. He held her hand as they walked along the forest path, staring up at the figures swarming among the trees. The reptilian creatures moved with impossible grace, laughing to each other in their own strange language as they used the sharp blades on their body to tend to the trees. Every so often, one of them would call down a greeting to the passing humans below._

_“I’m not sure,” his mother admitted, shrugging. “I created the forest, and the Hork Bajir recognize that, I guess. But it’s their world, not mine. I suppose they can call me what they want.”_

_“So the Hork Bajir came up with it?” Marco asked. He watched as pair of the tree-dwellers sliced thin strips of bark from a tree and began feeding them to their child. They moved as gently as leaves swaying in the wind. “Am I a Greywaren, too?”_

_“I’m sure you could be,” his mother said. She mussed his hair, laughing as he squirmed away. “But that’s not really for us to decide.”_

It had to be her. 

His mother was seated at the base of the rotting banyan tree. 

He had no idea how that had come to be — was she a prisoner? Was she in charge? Was she even still alive? But it was his mother. He knew it without any doubt. She was the Greywaren of this forest. The banyan tree had always been her home. 

Marco could scarcely breath, realization freezing the air in his lungs, but just as suddenly, he was struck by a fiery conviction. No way in hell was he going to let himself be dragged to his death, not when his mother was _right there_. 

His captors made to pull him out of the forest toward the swamp. Marco snarled and fought with a renewed desperation, the strength of the gorilla in his arms. He managed to free one of his arms, granting him leverage that had previously been missing. He grabbed one of the demons by the throat and threw it into another one. He punched a third and slammed it against a nearby tree, and _finally_ he was free. 

Marco scrambled back as the remaining two demons converged on him. The others were already climbing to their feet, barely winded. A flash of light reflected off the sharp blades on their arms and legs, and Marco suddenly—belatedly—realized that they were mimicking the shape of the Hork Bajir. Except now their gentle ministrations were replaced with aggression and violence.

He had no idea how he was going to fight off all of them. 

Luckily, just as the first pair of Hork Bajir demons ran forward, a giant shape lunged from the trees. In a blur of orange and black, the tiger struck the pair of demons and brought them to the ground, tearing viciously at their throats. The remaining demons reared back, surprised by the intrusion, and the tiger took full advantage, launching at the closest one and nearly tearing its head off. 

The other demons tried to attack, but Marco jumped forward and shoved them back, using his gorilla strength to crack their heads together. He narrowly avoided a blade to the throat, but recovered by flinging one of the demons into a nearby tree. With perfect timing, the tiger attacked the other one and tore its face apart. It crumpled to the ground, jerking in pain until it finally slumped over, unmoving. 

The sudden end to the fight felt unreal. Marco couldn’t stop shaking, breathing heavily and staring at the dead bodies strewn around them. Already their shadowed forms were disintegrating into dust. 

Panting, the tiger turned to stare at him. Marco stared back. 

<Marco?> Jake asked. Black blood dripped from his jaws. <Are you okay?> 

Marco couldn’t quite focus, feeling overwhelmed. Dumbly, he replied, <Aren’t you supposed to be advocating for frosted flakes or something?>

Jake paused, watching him with a cock to his head that looked unnaturally human. <Did you just make a Tony the Tiger reference? _Really_? Right now? > 

The exasperation in Jake’s voice was enough to make Marco feel more rooted. They were in a demon-infested dream world and they were both animals and it was all entirely _insane_ , but if Jake was frustrated by Marco’s humor, then everything couldn’t be too bad. 

He latched onto the familiarity with desperation. Still rattled, Marco corrected, <No, you’re supposed to say ‘ _they’re grrrrreat’_ , remember?>

Jake sighed, shaking his head. It looked very strange on a tiger, like he was trying to shake off water, but he paused midway through, staring past Marco to the valley. 

Marco turned to look, and froze as he realized what had distracted Jake. The demons near the edge of the swamp had caught sight of them. They were approaching the forest menacingly, blades flashing in the sun. 

<Run!> Jake shouted, lips pulled back in a snarl. 

<But—> Marco began. He didn’t know how he planned to finish. _My mother is there! Yes, the dead one!_ The demons were growing in numbers as their fellows caught wind of their targets, and Marco stared at them in growing horror. 

<Marco, _now_! > Jake yelled again. <Get to the river! I’m right behind you!> 

Marco turned away, stomach churning with indecision even as the demons loomed closer. He bolted in the forest, running on his knuckles as fast as his gorilla body would allow. He shook with exhaustion, but terror fueled his pace. 

He fled with Jake at his heels, and left the banyan tree and his mother behind.

 

 

* * *

 

 

**RACHEL**

 

 

“Wait,” Rachel said, combing out her long, wet hair with her fingers. “You mean all those times your parents joked about you seeing the future, they were being serious?” 

She shivered in the cool autumn air, already regretting her decision to change back into her human form. At least when she was wet and miserable as a bear, she had _fur_. But the stone path that ran along the edge of the lake was too narrow for a grizzly to navigate, and save charging headfirst into the waterfall, Rachel couldn’t see any other way of getting to the cave opening behind the falls. 

She and Cassie were making their way along the edge of the water now, stepping carefully to avoid any loose stones. Their clothes were sopping wet, but—as Tobias pointed out—at least they hadn’t lost them in the transition. Rachel figured she’d be grateful for small victories at this point.

Tobias had chosen to remain a hawk, claiming it was easier to keep a lookout that way. He perched on Rachel’s outstretched arm, doing his best to keep his sharp talons from slicing at her bare skin.

“No, they were joking. Mostly,” Cassie replied. “I’m not really psychic like you’d see in movies or anything. I just get flashes of intuition sometimes. Occasionally I get dreams about something that’s going to happen.” 

“I don’t know about you, but that sounds exactly like something I’d see in a movie,” Rachel said, arching an eyebrow at Tobias. “How does it work? Do you just concentrate and poof, magic vision?”

“No,” Cassie said. “Usually I have to be touching someone. Though obviously with the dreams, it doesn’t work that way. I’m still not sure what causes those.”

<When did you see this place?> Tobias asked.

“When we all touched Elfangor’s hand,” Cassie answered. “It was strange. Normally the most I get from people is a vague impression of their personality or how they’re feeling. But I got a full vision from Elfangor, like a waking dream. That’s never happened before.” 

<Maybe it’s this place,> Tobias suggested. 

“It definitely feels like the kind of place that would make your psychic magic go haywire,” Rachel added.

“It’s not magic.” 

“Uh-huh, sure,” Rachel said as she took a cautious step over a gap in the stone ledge. “What did your magic brain tell you about me?”

Rachel didn’t look, but she could feel Cassie making a face at her back. She grinned as Cassie sighed and said, “You feel like a brick wall.” 

That made Rachel pause, and she turned to give Cassie a confused look. “What?” 

“Not in a bad way,” Cassie elaborated. “You feel solid. Unmovable. Most people will fade in and out depending on the situation, but you radiate confidence, even when I know you’re just as lost as everyone else.”

<What about me?> Tobias asked.

“I don’t know,” Cassie replied, shrugging at him. She looked a bit uncomfortable, and Rachel got the impression she didn’t really like talking about her powers. “I honestly try not to touch people if I can help it. I feel like it’s kind of – I don’t know, impolite?” 

“Yeah, I can see people getting annoyed about having their emotions read,” Rachel said. Then, trying to lighten the mood, she added, “I bet it’s funny sometimes, though. Being able to see how people really feel and all that. Like, does Marco know how stupid his jokes are?” 

There was a brief hesitation before Cassie quietly replied, “He’s pretty sad most of the time, actually.”

_Well, so much for that_ , Rachel thought, feeling the mood sink with all the grace of a brick. She glanced at Tobias, who stared back at her with unreadable hawk eyes, and felt an uncomfortable twist in her stomach. _I bet I’m not feeling all that confident right now_.

<What do you think is in the cave?> Tobias asked after a brief pause, an obvious attempt to change the subject.

Grateful, Rachel looked ahead to where the shadowed opening of the cave was waiting. The mist off the waterfall was thick in the air and it dripped down Rachel’s face, much to her continued annoyance. Tobias’s wings were soaked, and Rachel imagined he was regretting his earlier decision to stay a bird. 

“I thought I saw Elfangor,” Cassie said, sounding uncertain. “But now I think it must have been his brother. He looked too young to be Elfangor.”

Rachel frowned as she remembered the gut-wrenching terror of Elfangor’s death, feeling the remnants ripple down her spine. He had died trying to protect them, a fact that Rachel would not forget any time soon. With conviction in her voice, she said, “Well, maybe this time we can actually help.”

She stepped forward into the mouth of the cave. It was tall but narrow, just wide enough to let Rachel pass through with little hindrance. If Jake had been there, he would probably have needed to turn to his side, but Rachel only needed to transfer Tobias to her shoulder. He dug his talons gently into her clothes, clearly trying to avoid hurting her despite his sharp claws.

She squinted her eyes into the darkness of the cave, unable to make out anything in the gloom. Warily, she called, “Hello? Is anyone there? We—” 

_TWHAP_! 

Before she could finish, a sharp noise cut through the air. A blade suddenly rested against her throat, sharp enough to slice a shallow cut in her skin. Tobias flared his wings in alarm, but Rachel froze as she felt a bead of blood drip down her neck. 

Eyes rapidly adjusting, Rachel saw a familiar shape emerging from the darkness: a blue centaur-like creature, with delicate limbs and a mouthless face just like Elfangor. However, this creature had a tail blade pinned to Rachel’s neck, all four green eyes narrowed at the intruders. 

<Who are you?> he asked. Despite his aggression, Rachel could hear a tremor of fear in his soundless voice. <How do you know my brother?> 

_He must have been listening to us walk up_ , Rachel thought, trying hard not to shake as she forced herself to stay still. The creature’s tail blade trembled like he was barely holding back, and Rachel had the sudden image of her head sliced clean off her body. It was not pleasant. 

<Please don’t hurt Rachel,> Tobias urged. He settled carefully back on Rachel’s shoulder, his movements minute. <Your brother sent us to find you!> 

“We’re here to help,” Cassie added. Her tone was firm and gentle, echoing the same forced calm that Cassie always radiated when she was around skittish animals. Rachel couldn’t see her behind them, but she could easily picture how Cassie must look: arms out, hands open, and using deliberately slow movements like she was back at home calming a startled horse. “You’re Elfangor’s brother, right? We’re friends. We came to help you.” 

The centaur drew his tail blade back a small amount, enough for Rachel to feel slightly more comfortable taking a breath. She narrowed her eyes at him when he neglected to pull back any further. 

<You know my brother?> he asked, still wary. He maintained an aggressive pose, tail blade lingering far too close for comfort, and Rachel felt anger bubble in the pit of her stomach.

“Look, do you want our help or not?” she asked, tone soured by lingering fear. “I don’t appreciate having weapons shoved in my face.”

He blinked at her, as though he hadn’t considered her perspective, but slowly drew his tail back all the way. Now that she had time to look, Rachel could see what Cassie meant by mistaking him for Elfangor. He clearly shared features with the other centaur even beyond their race, albeit in a younger form.

“Thank you,” Cassie said, sounding a bit more relaxed now that the obvious threat was passed. “Would you be able to step out a bit? It’s kind of hard to see you…” 

Rachel stepped back to allow the centaur more space, and he obliged Cassie by moving cautiously forward. He was smaller than Elfangor, torso lean rather than developed. His limbs looked a bit long for his size, giving him a gangly air. 

<You said that Elfangor sent you?> he asked. <Where is he? Why did he not accompany you?> 

Rachel exchanged glances with the others, anticipating a difficult conversation. 

Rather than answer, Tobias asked, <What’s your name?> 

<I am Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill,> he replied. He stepped forward, more impatient than threatening, and asked again, <Where is my brother?> 

The hesitation in their response was more obvious this time. Aximili’s eyes darted between the three of them, looking increasingly panicked, and Rachel could tell his patience was nearing its limit. 

With that in mind, she faced him dead-on and quietly answered, “He’s dead. Visser Three killed him.” 

All four of Aximili’s eyes locked on her. The centaur froze in place, clearly stunned by the news. For a long moment, the only sound came from the pounding waterfall behind them.

Finally, Aximili whispered, <How?> He sounded lost.

“It’s a long story,” Cassie said. She stepped forward and placed a comforting hand on Aximili’s arm. His stalk eyes darted to her, alarmed, as she continued, “But we’ll try to explain as best we can.” 

Haltingly, they introduced themselves and told the tale of Elfangor’s death, each jumping in to relieve the narrative when the others faltered. Aximili listened without interruption, save for one interjection when Cassie revealed that Elfangor had given them the power to transform into animals. 

<The morphing power?> he asked, all four eyes growing wide. <But that’s—> 

<What?> Tobias prompted.

Aximili looked away. He trotted lightly for a few moments on the stone with his front hooves, looking a bit like a skittish deer. After a moment, he replied, <It’s a sacred gift. I’ve… never heard of it being given to outsiders before.>

It didn’t take long to finish the story, given how little they understood about the situation. By the end, Cassie just shrugged and said, “We don’t know what we can do to help, but your brother protected us from Visser Three and told us that you could help us if we found you.”

<How _did_ you find me? > Aximili asked. <If Elfangor knew I was here, he could have found a way—> He broke off, trotting his front hooves again. Rachel suspected that was his way of showing discomfort. 

<I don’t know if he knew where you were,> Tobias said. <He just told us to get to the river.> 

“As for how we found you,” Rachel began, a small smirk ghosting on her lips, “Cassie has a magic brain.”

“What—no, I don’t,” Cassie protested, waving a hand at her. “I just—I saw a vision of you in the cave. Maybe Elfangor knew where you were and he showed me, I don’t know. It wasn’t like my normal visions at all.”

<I don’t understand why he didn’t morph. He protected me when Visser Three attacked, but he should have be able to escape,> Aximili murmured. 

“It was a really bad wound,” Cassie murmured with a mild grimace. 

“We don’t know what happened,” Rachel said, “But he was the one who called us here. He said demons were infesting the land and he needed our help.” 

<He also said something about the Greywaren,> Tobias added. <Do you know who that is?> 

Aximili looked surprised. <He told you about the Greywaren?>

Tobias ruffled his feathers, flicking specks of water at Rachel. After a slight hesitation, he admitted, <I’m not psychic or anything like Cassie, but I also had a weird vision when I touched Elfangor’s hand. It was a jumble of images, but at the end I heard Elfangor’s voice telling me I had to save the Greywaren.> 

“Visser Three talked about the Greywaren too, didn’t he?” Rachel asked. “Something about how the demons had captured him?” 

Cassie nodded. Turning to Aximili, she asked, “Is that what the war is about?” 

<In a way,> Aximili replied. <My people, the Andalites, have been fighting the demon army for a long time. We call them Yeerks. Recently they’ve grown stronger and more ferocious than we’ve ever seen. My brother and I were sent to try and figure out what had changed. During our investigation, we realized that the Yeerks had captured a Greywaren.> 

“Okay,” Rachel said, mildly impatient. “And what is that?” 

<A Greywaren is a dreamer,> Aximili explained. <Specifically, the Greywaren is the one who dreamed this forest. Greywarens are outsiders like you, but their power here is incredible. They can create anything they imagine. They can even bring the things they create into other worlds.

<When we realized that the Yeerks had captured a Greywaren, we knew the situation was much more dire than we first thought,> Aximili continued. <We had to warn our people. But Visser Three saw us and attacked. He can’t risk the Greywaren being discovered before they’ve solidified their power base.> 

Rachel knitted her brow, trying to wrap her head around this new information. “So, what, the demons have possessed someone who can literally dream them _anything_?” 

“How can we possibly fight against that?” Cassie asked.

<Yeah, couldn’t the Greywaren just snap their fingers and trap us?> Tobias added. 

<The Greywaren isn’t controlled by the Yeerks,> Aximili said. <They are trapped. The demons are siphoning energy from them to add to their strength, but that does not mean they have the same powers. Demons and dreamers are opposites: one destroys and the other creates. Even the strongest demon wouldn’t be able to use a dreamer’s powers.> 

“So that’s good, right?” Rachel asked. “I mean, they’re siphoning off this guy’s power, but they can’t use it. So we just need to steal him back.”

“We were barely able to run away from the demons in the forest,” Cassie replied, looking unsure. “How are we going to be able to fight off a whole army of Yeerks when we can’t even escape a few of them? Jake and Marco might be captured right now!” 

<The longer the Yeerks have the Greywaren, the stronger they will become,> Aximili said, his tone somber. <Even if we can’t beat them, I have to escape this forest so I can tell my people what has happened. If the Yeerks are left to grow unchallenged, they will destroy our world – and they won’t stop there. The Greywaren’s power can reach into your world as well.>

<They’ll start attacking our world too, won’t they?> Tobias asked. He didn’t wait for a response, clearly reading the answer in Aximili’s solemn expression. Darting his eyes to Cassie and Rachel, Tobias declared, <We have to stop them.>

“Obviously,” Rachel agreed, “but how? Cassie’s right, we could barely fight off a small group of them.” 

Cassie frowned, furrowing her brow in thought. After a moment, she asked, “Aximili, if you were able to get back to your people, could they help stop the demons?” 

<We’ve been fighting against the Yeerks since they’ve first appeared,> Aximili affirmed. <We won’t rest until they are gone.> 

“We should focus on getting you back to them, then,” Rachel reasoned, glancing to Cassie and Tobias for confirmation. “So you can let them know about the Greywaren.” 

“And we need to find Jake and Marco,” Cassie added. “We can’t just leave them here.” 

<But how are we going to find them?> Tobias asked. <This forest is huge, and the instant we leave the river, the demons are going to be gunning for us.>

<Actually, there is something we could try,> Aximili said. Rachel raised her eyebrows at the sudden optimism. He gestured hesitantly at Rachel’s shoulder, where Tobias was still perched. <I believe Tobias might be able to help trigger a vision for Cassie, as he did before.> 

Silence reigned as they all stared at him, mutual confusion radiating in the air. 

“Come again?” Cassie finally asked. 

<How can I help Cassie?> Tobias clarified. 

“What do you mean, like he did before?” Rachel added, narrowing her eyes. 

Aximili blinked at them, clearly not expecting that reaction. <You’re a mirror,> he explained to Tobias, like it was obvious. <You can amplify her powers.> 

“What’s a mirror?” Rachel asked. “And what makes you think Tobias is one of them?” 

<A mirror is a being who reflects magic,> Aximili said slowly. He shifted his front hooves awkwardly, glancing to each of them in turn. <It’s a very distinct magical energy. Tobias is made of the magic from two worlds, so he has the power to reflect magic back on itself. It’s very likely that’s how Cassie was able to find me.> 

“You mean it wasn’t Elfangor?” Cassie asked. “Wait, does that mean he knew I was psychic too?” 

<My brother does not have the power to send visions,> Aximili answered, a flicker of pain echoing in his tone. <But we can read magic in people, especially outsiders. He would have seen your potential, Cassie. And a mirror like Tobias can reflect and strengthen other people’s magic. Elfangor would have seen it as clearly as I can. It is likely that he used Tobias as a conduit to help Cassie determine the likely place I’d be hiding.> 

<Is that why I saw a vision too?> Tobias asked. 

<I can’t be sure,> Aximili said. <I’ve… never actually met a mirror before, so I don’t know exactly how the power works. It’s possible.>

“What does that even mean, though?” Rachel asked. “How could Tobias have magic from two worlds?” A small part of her boggled at this strange new reality, where centaurs talked about fighting wars with demons and her friends were suddenly full of magical surprises. And just ten minutes ago, she had been a grizzly bear! It was ridiculous. 

<I’m not sure why he has those abilities,> Aximili replied, clearly at a loss. <Simply that he does. The magic in both of you is very different than the magic of this world.> 

No one seemed to know what to say in light of this revelation. After a short time, Tobias shifted in his perch on Rachel’s shoulder.

<Let me down,> he requested. He fluffed out his feathers as soon as Rachel set him on the stone floor, shaking off droplets of water from the waterfall. In the blink of an eye, he transformed back into a human boy. 

Tobias stood up, his human form just barely short enough to avoid banging his head against the rocks of the cave. Damp blond hair hung in his eyes as he looked at Cassie, expression determined. 

“I have no idea what being a mirror means,” Tobias said, shrugging. “But if it means we can find Jake and Marco and help Aximili get out of here, I’ll do my best to help you find them.” 

He held out a hand to Cassie like a promise. 

After a brief moment of hesitation, her eyes darting to Rachel for encouragement, Cassie took his hand in a firm grip. 

For a second, Rachel thought it might not work. 

Then Cassie collapsed.

 

 

* * *

 

  

**JAKE**

 

 

The forest flashed by in a rush as Jake and Marco bolted away. 

Jake knew he could go faster. The tiger in his mind kept urging him to do so, feeding off the fear spinning in his heart, but Jake had already let panic feed his decisions once today and it got Marco captured. He wasn’t about to make the same mistake again.

Marco maintained a quick, shuffling run beside him, but he was starting to flag.

Behind them, Jake could hear the cracking of underbrush as the demons pursued them. It sounded like they were gaining more followers as they ran, though Jake couldn’t be entirely sure that wasn’t just his imagination.

One of the demons screeched behind him, a chilling sound seemingly designed for the sole purpose of rattling one’s spine. 

It worked.

They ran faster. 

<How—far—?> Marco gasped. He lagged behind again and Jake doubled back to nudge at his back. He could smell matted blood in his dense gorilla fur. 

<The river is just ahead,> Jake said, pushing him forward. <Go! I’ll hold them off!> 

<No, idiot—> Marco protested, but stumbled at Jake’s push nonetheless. 

<I’m way faster than you!> snapped Jake. <Trust me!> 

With that, he spun to face the oncoming horde. 

The first few demons slithered toward him just as Marco disappeared from view. They looked like huge centipedes, round and fat and covered in hundreds of thin legs. Jake clawed at them and marveled at how easily they went down, like they were nothing more than puffed-up plastic bags. He took down three before he realized they weren’t the targets he needed to focus on. 

Coming up behind the scouting worm demons were a number of large, vaguely reptilian demons with blades scattered across their arms and legs. They weren’t as fast as the centipedes, but they were large and imposing. 

The first one leapt. 

<I’ve found the river! Hurry, Jake!> 

Jake dodged, barely missing a blade that tried to slice through his right eye. He whirled around to run, but a second blade demon met his pivot with a pair of long slashes on his flank. The pain bloomed hot and sharp, shooting down his left side with a jolt, and Jake roared and staggered.

<Jake?> asked Marco. <Jake, answer me!> 

Jake lunged at the demon with a speed he had never known, tearing out its throat with one quick twist. Luck erred on his side and the demon’s corpse landed on its companion, knocking the latter back just long enough for Jake to make his escape.

<I’m on my way!> Jake shouted back, making up his lost time with as much speed as the tiger body could manage. <Be prepared to ju—AHHH!>

Jake burst though an overgrowth of plants to see Marco dead ahead, standing at the edge of the riverbank. He had just enough time to see Marco’s eyes widen in panic before they collided, sending both of them into the roiling waters.

They both screamed as they fell, plunging into cold water with scarcely enough time to snag a breath. The disorienting change left Jake wondering which way was up or down, and he spun in circles underneath the water for long enough that his lungs were burning for air. 

The tiger instincts kicked in without a second thought, urging him toward the correct direction, and Jake burst through the surface of the water with a gasp. He looked around frantically for Marco as he paddled desperately to stay afloat, and finally caught him twenty feet ahead. Marco was bobbing up and down, arms akimbo as he flailed for traction. 

A small voice in the back of Jake’s mind whispered, _Marco doesn’t know how to swim_. Something told him that gorillas weren’t much better. 

Target in mind, Jake pushed himself toward Marco, paddling faster to try and match his pace. As he moved, he could feel the tiger mind egging him on, feeling entirely more natural in the water than Jake imagined he would be in his normal human body. The longer he was in the river, the more he grew used to its rhythms. It was more like balancing with the water than fighting against it.

When Jake was five feet away, Marco floundered yet again, but this time he didn’t bob back up. Panic in his heart, Jake dove into the current without a second thought and found Marco sinking slowly to the bottom.

Jake rammed into his side, hurtling them both toward the opposite side of the river. He tried to nudge Marco up to the surface again, but the water pressure was too powerful; instead, Jake pushed them both down beneath the whirling current, using the comparatively calm waters underneath to swim faster to the side. Down at the bottom, mud swirled up into their eyes, blinding Jake to his destination. He felt his muscles and lungs burning, no end in sight, and briefly thought _, I’m going to drown us both—_  

Suddenly Jake felt upward traction under his paws as he ran into the opposite riverbank. He launched up against it, propelling Marco ahead of him. It took two leaps, but Jake soon burst above the surface. Marco was beside him, movements worryingly slow, but Jake couldn’t let himself worry about that now. He gulped in air, hacking on water and fighting the rushing water. His hind legs scraped along the side of the bank as he tried to gain traction, but the current was too strong for him to get both himself and Marco up onto dry land. The far side of the bank was _right there_ , he just needed to—

In the end, it was good luck that saved them both. Jake’s hind legs abruptly collided with some higher ground, a collection of rocks that gave him a better base than the slippery mud he’d been working with up unto that point, and the added traction gave Jake the strength he needed to push himself and Marco out of the raging river. 

They collapsed on the shore, mere feet away from the bank’s drop off. Jake’s limbs shook with exhaustion, and he stared blearily at Marco as he hacked and vomited up water. Up until that point, Jake had never wondered if gorillas could vomit. Apparently they could. Huh. 

His mind swam with delirium. 

Between hacking coughs, Marco suddenly turned back into his normal self and sat curled over on his knees, soaking wet and miserable. 

“ _Fuck… this_ …” he groaned between coughs. 

<Are you okay?> Jake asked. He made an aborted motion to crawl forward, feeling his entire body tremble with effort. 

“Am I okay?” Marco asked, his voice edged with hysteria. He turned to stare at Jake incredulously, looking almost comic with his water-soaked hair sticking up every which way. “Am I _okay_? We just fought _demons_ as freakin’ woodland critters in a magical dream world, and then a river nearly killed us, and now I’m talking to a _fucking tiger_ , of course I’m not okay!” 

Jake stared back at him. After a brief pause, he said, <But you’re not, like, dying or anything, right?> 

The panic in Marco’s eyes slightly dimmed as Jake’s deadpan tone struck a cord, and after a few moments it calmed mostly into a glare. Heavy with sarcasm, Marco replied, “Despite literally _everything_ , no, I am not dying. Traumatized for life and in desperate need of therapy, but still kicking.”

<Yeah, sign me up for that therapy too,> Jake muttered, struggling up to a seated position. His fur felt waterlogged and matted, and it irked at his mind like a pebble in his shoe. <This whole experience has been majorly fucked up.>

“Remind me to never hike again.”

<Agreed.>

 For a short time, they just sat there, breathing hard and waiting for the adrenaline to die down. The sun was slowly sinking in the sky, giving the forest an eerie aura as the shadows grew deeper, and Jake kept seeing demons forming from the corners of his eyes. He had no idea why the river stopped them – magic? Scent? Some kind of witch-like aversion to running water? – but he couldn’t stop the worry that they were reforming just out of sight, waiting to attack again. 

Part of him wanted to morph back to human like Marco, but the sharpness of his tiger claws were his only comfort against the panic. 

“We need to get out of here,” Marco said, his voice still ragged after regaining his breath. “They could come back.” 

<Yeah, but where can we go?> Jake asked. <The only place we know that’s safe is the river, and that’s almost as deadly.>

“I mean we need to leave this whole stupid dream world,” Marco clarified. 

<How? Even if we could get back to the meadow, there’s no telling we’d be able to escape. Not with the way it trapped us before,> Jake said, recalling how the forest had closed around them and forced them down its desired path. <Besides, we have no idea where the others are. We can’t leave without them.> 

“Elfangor said he brought us here, right? Maybe he’s the reason the forest acted like that,” Marco guessed, making a vague gesture as if to say, _who knows_? He laboriously climbed to his feet, his drenched clothes still dripping. “We can’t just wait here. We’re sitting ducks.” 

Unable to stop himself, Jake corrected, <I think I’m a sitting tiger, actually.> 

Marco paused midway through wringing out his shirt to give Jake a thoroughly disgusted look. Victorious, Jake bared his teeth in what he was sure looked like a very threatening tiger grin. 

“That was bad and you should feel bad,” Marco muttered, shaking his head.

<I’m hilarious,> countered Jake decisively. Without segue, he went on, <Seriously though, we need to find the others. We’ll fight better as a team. And maybe we can figure out how to get home.>

“I… might have an idea for that, actually,” Marco began, sounding a bit awkward about it. He looked around their current position with a skeptical eye, taking note of the thick line of trees alongside the riverbank. The bank mirrored their location as far as they could see in either direction, not revealing any easy options for cover. “I’m not sure if we’d be safer in the forest or by the river, though. We’re pretty exposed here.”

<We’re exposed everywhere. At least the river keeps the demons back,> Jake replied. <What’s your idea?> 

“I don’t know if it’ll work. It’s kind of weird,” Marco admitted. He made a face, as though he was trying and failing to find a proper way to describe it, and finally just said, “Look, I can’t really explain it, just— I need to sleep. For like five minutes, tops. Can you watch out for demons?”

Jake narrowed his eyes, feeling a growl bubble in the back of his throat in response to Marco’s evasion. Annoyed, he said, <This really isn’t the time to be keeping secrets, Marco—>

“It’s not that, I just—” Marco protested, holding his arms out in a pacifying motion. “Look, I’ll explain after, I promise. I just— I don’t know if it’ll even work, and it’s kind of confusing and weird and we have _no time_ right now.” 

Jake stared at Marco, noting the sharp conviction mixed with desperation on his face, and felt a certain sense of resignation in his heart. His desire to expose Marco’s caginess warred with his natural inclination to trust his best friend, but in the end, Jake opted to err on the side of faith. 

<Fine,> he agreed, noting the relieved slump to Marco’s posture that resulted. <But I expect an explanation later.>

“If we survive, sure, whatever you want, big guy,” Marco replied, with enough flippancy that Jake felt his hackles raise out of spite. But he knew Marco well enough to read the genuine stress on his face. 

Opting to stay near the safety of the river, Marco curled up next to the nearest tree. He was asleep in seconds despite the hard ground, a talent that Jake had never been able to master. However, given their exhausting day, he imagined he’d probably find it a lot easier now. 

Due to his own fatigue, Jake stayed seated upright, not trusting himself to lie down. He kept a running watch on the trees, trying not to jump at every small movement as he stared hard at the shadows deep in the woods. The constant flow of the river behind him was a small comfort, but Jake couldn’t help but wonder why it was able to repel the demons. It didn’t make logical sense, but neither did most of this world.

Almost on cue, a small fluttering motion drew Jake’s gaze. A butterfly landed on a nearby bit of shrubbery. Its wings moved gently in the faint breeze, glowing with a faint luminescence and shifting through various colors in a decidedly unnatural way.

As Jake stared, a handful of other butterflies floated over and joined their fellow, decorating the nearby shrubbery like holiday lights in a myriad of colors. One landed on Marco’s forehead, wings gently flapping as they glowed sea green. Marco didn’t react, his face slack with sleep. 

<What the fuck,> Jake muttered to himself, tearing his eyes away from the enchanted scene with effort. He didn’t trust the shadows to stay empty. For all he knew, the weird butterflies were just another distraction. 

Jake couldn’t be certain how long he sat there, fighting off fatigue and trying to stay vigilant. It couldn’t have been longer than five minutes. His eyes and limbs were heavy with exhaustion and his side stung with sharp pain every time he breathed. Eventually, despite his desire to keep his claws, Jake succumbed to the pressing desire to return to his human form. 

The pain in his side vanished as he did so, much to his relief, but the lethargic weight on his bones did not. Jake shuffled over and slumped against the same tree Marco was curled up underneath, fighting the urge to sleep the entire way. The colorful butterflies continued their floating vigil. One landed delicately on Jake’s knee, colors shifting from deep purple to sky blue in a blink.

Jake stared at the collection of butterflies, watching their wings sway gently in the wind, and slipped into a doze without warning. The effort of their escape and Marco’s rescue was hitting him in one fell swoop, and for a long moment, Jake let himself be taken in by the lure of safety.

He didn’t realize he’d closed his eyes until he was suddenly snapping awake, squinting in the late afternoon light. 

The shadows were starting to look more solid. 

Jake stared with growing alarm. 

“Marco,” he hissed, jabbing the still-sleeping boy. Marco was curled up on his side, looking like he was clutching something hidden in his arms. “Marco, get up!” 

The shadows nearest them started to shudder just as Marco’s eyes blinked open. 

Jake didn’t wait. He grabbed Marco’s arm and hauled him up, staring at the slowly forming demons with familiar panic. The river would only be another exercise in trying not to drown, so they’d have to brave the trees. Focused only on escape, Jake shoved Marco ahead of him, running away from the forming shadows along the bank of the river. 

Wordlessly, they both ran.

The demons followed.

 

 

* * *

 

 

**AXIMILI**

 

 

Stepping out of the safety of the water was more challenging than Aximili had imagined. 

Logically, he knew he must. The Yeerks might not be willing to cross the running water, connected the leyline as it was, but that didn’t mean they had ceased looking for him. He could only survive so long without grazing, and the longer he waited, the stronger the demons became. Leaving now with the outsiders was his best chance at returning home to warn his people. 

And yet, as he reached the edge of the water, Aximili hesitated.

<Is everything okay?> Tobias asked. He had remorphed into his sleek hawk form and perched on a nearby boulder. If Aximili focused, he could see the magic radiating around him, swirls of bright gold mixing with calm, Andalite blue. It was the exact color of Elfangor’s fur and emanated on a very familiar current.

Somehow, Tobias was part Andalite. His human form appeared no different from the other outsiders, but magic did not lie. Cassie’s magic was a foreign purple, deep and steady and radically unlike anything Aximili had ever seen. The gold of Tobias’s aura was distinctly strange, but the blue was the same comforting shade of Aximili’s own family. 

Aximili wondered if Elfangor knew. He must have seen it. 

<Are we leaving, or are we just going to wait here?> Rachel asked, distracting Aximili from his thoughts. She didn’t appear to have any magic, but her presence exuded strength even without the benefit of her grizzly bear form. <You saw Marco and Jake running away from demons, didn’t you, Cassie?> 

<They were running along the river,> Cassie confirmed. She turned to look at Aximili as he finally climbed out of the water, breaking free from the current that was threatening to pull him further downstream. <Are you _sure_ we’ll be safe from the demons in animal form? > 

Her tone was uncertain, and Tobias echoed the sentiments. <Yeah, they attacked us before when we were like this. Why would they suddenly shy away now?> 

<They were pursuing you as outsiders first,> Aximili said, shaking off excess water droplets as he began to climb up the rather steep ravine that encircled the river offshoot. <Yeerks cannot sense magic the way my people can, so as long as you’re in animal form, you blend in with the rest of the forest. Unless you attack or reveal your outsider form, the demons won’t have any reason to suspect you.>

<What about you, then?> Rachel asked. Her bear form was too large to follow him up the narrow path, but she bounded up the side of the ravine using a large boulder as her base, landing heavily at the top. <Aren’t they also looking for you?> 

<It is not as easy for them to find me,> Aximili replied. <I belong in this world.> 

<Wouldn’t morphing be even safer though?> Tobias asked. <You can become a hawk too. Two sets of eyes would help us search.> 

<An owl might be better,> Cassie suggested, and then paused. <Unless your animal form isn’t a bird.> 

<The morphing power lets you turn into whatever form you wish,> Aximili explained, once he realized the source of her confusion. <It’s simply easiest to turn into the animal matching your innate nature.> 

<Oh,> Cassie replied, sounding surprised. She angled her snout to the sky, where the sun was slowly disappearing behind the trees. <Well, whatever you do, we should hurry. The sky looks just like it did in my vision.> 

Without waiting, Rachel started making her way through the forest, following the general path of the river. Cassie bounded after her, a sleek wolf darting elegantly between the trees as a vanguard for Rachel’s powerful morph. 

For a brief moment, Aximili stayed frozen as he watched his new companions leave. He felt lost among his own thoughts, drowning in uncertainty as he considered their plan. He knew he needed to get home to warn his people, but without Elfangor, the entire world seemed lost. _Elfangor_ —the great warrior, the one who Aximili had grown up hearing boastful stories about, his ever-powerful brother—had fallen to Visser Three, leaving nothing but a collection of outsiders behind. How could Aximili possibly escape if even Elfangor had fallen?

<Are you ready?> Tobias asked, cutting through Aximili’s thoughts yet again. He crouched forward as he prepared to take off, his piercing eyes locking on Aximili. His aura glowed ever brighter around him. 

Aximili recalled the outsiders’ story of how they had arrived. How Tobias had stopped when he heard Elfangor’s call and led them into the foreign world. 

_What is he to you, Elfangor?_ Aximili wondered. Outsiders were rare visitors to his world, and Aximili had never heard of any Andalite managing to cross into another realm. Elfangor was a warrior of legend, but even his vast accomplishments had never dared to claim something so outrageous. But even as the question spun around in his mind, Aximili’s heart ached with the knowledge that he would never learn the answer. 

Shaking off the melancholy, Aximili made his decision. He concentrated on his morph and quickly shifted into a smaller form covered in thick gray feathers. He blinked his eyes as they adjusted to the dim light, the world growing sharper around him, and felt the owl instincts bubble up in the back of his mind. 

Aximili looked up at Tobias, who was still perched in the tree. The blue and gold magic swirled around him, glittering among the leaves. 

<Lead the way,> Aximili said.

Tobias took to the skies in lieu of a response and Aximili followed, bursting above the trees. Below them, Aximili could see Rachel and Cassie weaving through the forest, appearing in brief glimpses through the trees. In his owl form, Aximili could see how wide the forest spread, with trees rippling along hills for miles in every direction. They were near the border to winter, close enough that Aximili could see the line of pine trees and snow layering the ground to the north. As he examined the terrain, he realized that the design was even more deliberate than he and Elfangor had suspected. The forest appeared to be divided into four sectors surrounding an enormous banyan tree in the center. The barren trees and gleaming white snow in the northern sector contrasted sharply with the oranges and reds of the eastern sector, where Aximili and his companions were searching. On the opposite side of the banyan tree, the hills were alive with bright green leaves and multi-colored flowers, radiating the essence of spring and summer. 

There were large rivers cutting through each section and intersecting at the borders, with enough offshoots that each river looked like four fraying ropes crossed over into a square. Even from the sky, the power of the leyline radiated out from the water. 

Aximili stared with wonder at the tableau below, so different from the valleys he grew up in. For a brief moment, he nearly forgot their mission, but reality sharply returned when Tobias said, <The tree is dying.> 

Startled, Aximili said, <What do you mean?> 

<That tree in the middle,> Tobias explained. He was flying closer to the center than Aximili was, nearly one hundred feet away on the other side of the autumn river. <It’s rotting in that swamp.>

Aximili looked closer the tree despite his poor angle, and could just make out black lines of rot climbing up the trunk. Its roots were drowning in a viscous black swamp. Aximili could see shadowed shapes clustered like fungus along its edge. 

Feeling rather queasy at the sight of the infestation, Aximili quietly said, <That’s the center of the Yeerk’s stronghold. It must be where they’re keeping the Greywaren.> 

He looked away, unable to stomach the image of death any longer, and refocused his gaze along the autumn river. The light was growing ever darker, but that only made Axmili’s owl eyes sharper, and he flew closer to the river in order to get a better vantage point. The energy from the leyline was warm beneath his wings, supporting his flight and energizing his spirit. 

As he flew, Aximili felt the wind pick up, blowing downwind toward them. Suddenly, Cassie called out, <I think I can smell them!> 

Even as she spoke, Aximili caught sight of movement far ahead. Two outsider boys were running, one large and the other small, stumbling and weaving between the trees and the riverbank. 

Behind them, Aximili could see a mass of shadowed forms in pursuit. They were still far enough away to be indistinct, but they gained on the outsider boys with every passing step. 

<I see them!> Ax called out, angling closer to the bank of the river and gliding quickly toward the running boys. The shadows surrounding them seemed to grow thicker with every foot they ran, and as Aximili drew closer, he quickly realized just how outnumbered they all were.

_There is no escaping from this_ , he realized. Not if he wanted the outsiders to survive. Rachel, Cassie, and Tobias might be able to hide for a short time, but with this many Yeerks in the woods, even they would be rooted out eventually. 

_He_ might be able to escape, though. 

The realization made Aximili pause as he stared down at the scene below. The Yeerks were distracted. Even their guards on the borders of this forest would be caught up in the capture of the outsiders. They wouldn’t be paying attention to a single Andalite sneaking across the border. 

Aximili couldn’t have designed a better distraction. 

But he could see terror on the faces of the boys running below. He could remember the sadness in Cassie’s eyes as she spoke of Elfangor, the determination of Rachel as she insisted they should fight. 

He recalled the steady glow of magic radiating around Tobias as he promised to do what he could to help. 

Swallowing back his fear of the sheer mass of enemies around them, Aximili swooped down and made a jarring landing in the nearest clearing he could find to the outsider boys. He needed steady land if he was going to fight. 

He morphed back to his true form just in time for the outsiders to come bursting through the trees. Eyes growing wide with alarm, the larger boy nearly tripped as he scrambled to avoid hitting Aximili, but managed to skid to a stop and stay on his feet. The smaller boy was not so lucky. He slammed into his friend and tumbled to the ground. 

“Elfangor?” the larger boy asked, incredulous. He gasped for breath as he stared up at Aximili. 

<No, I am Aximili,> Aximili replied simply. <You must change back to your animal forms at once. The demons are upon you.> 

“Oh, really?” asked the smaller boy as he scrambled to his feet, his tone wild. In his hands, he clutched a strange tool that looked like a blade attached to a thick stick. “Really? The demons are coming? No kidding! What the hell did you think we were _running from_?” 

Ignoring him, Aximili said, <Turn into your animal forms and run. Your friends are coming and they will guide you somewhere safe. You need to go now.>

Eyes narrowing, the larger boy replied, “What about you? There are too many to fight alone!” 

Even in the low light, Aximili could see the resemblance to Rachel in his features, though his eyes and hair were darker. The larger boy must be Jake. Like Rachel, he didn’t appear to have any magic in his aura, but he stared at Aximili with fierce determination in his eyes. Beside him, Marco stared nervously at the surrounding forest. His magic seemed strange, though Aximili couldn’t quite figure out why. It shifted along with Marco’s movements and blended with the forest. 

<I will distract them,> Aximili began, but was cut off when Tobias landed in front of them. 

<We _all_ need to run, > Tobias said, just as Cassie came bounding out of the woods behind them. Rachel followed soon after, her giant bear form looming over all of them by a good margin. <They’ve started forming behind us, too. We have to get out of here!> 

<Come on,> Cassie echoed, her tone urgent. <Change into your animal forms! We can lose them in the river!> 

“We nearly drowned in there,” Jake protested, glancing between the river and forest with growing desperation. 

<There’s no time!> Rachel said. <Come on, we need to—>

“No, _screw_ _this_ ,” Marco interrupted, stepping forward and extending his arms. His voice was sharp enough to cut through the increasingly panicked discussion. “We need to _leave_. Right now.” 

<That’s what we’ve been _saying_ —> Rachel began, but Marco cut her off. 

“Not run away,” he snapped. “Leave! We need to get back to our world!” 

Jake flung his arms wide and exclaimed with exasperation, “ _How?_ How are we supposed to escape this stupid world?” 

As Aximili stared at Marco, he suddenly realized what was so strange about his aura. He clearly had magic, but it mixed seamlessly with the magic of the forest around him, its colors shifting and mirroring the forest as he moved. 

“We’ll use this,” Marco said, holding up the tool in his hands. Now that Aximili looked closer, he could see the edge of the blade glimmering with opalescent light as it reflected the dim sunlight in the twilight sky. 

“Where the hell did you get that?” Jake asked. 

Equally confused, Rachel added, “Is that an axe?” 

“I took it from my dreams,” Marco explained, his tone defensive. He stared at them with wary eyes. 

Aximili felt his stance grow rigid in realization. 

<You’re a dreamer,> he said, scarcely believing it. He couldn’t be the Greywaren, not if he had stumbled upon the world just that morning with the other outsiders, but now Aximili could see that his magic was nearly indistinguishable from the forest around them. He was simultaneously an outsider and a native.

He may not have created the forest, but it fit him all the same. 

<He’s a _what_? > Rachel asked, incredulous.

<Wait, like the Greywaren?> Cassie asked.

“The _what_?” Jake asked, glancing at her. 

<But how—?> began Tobias. 

A sudden movement in the trees cut through the discussion, and before he could even think of it, Aximili whipped his tail forward to slice through the first Yeerk that burst from the shadows. It slumped to the ground in pieces, but two more demons rose up from the darkness before it even stopped twitching. Opposite him, Rachel took on another pair of Yeerks, her bear claws slamming them to the ground with no mercy. 

“It’s gotta be now!” Marco said. He held the axe up and sliced it down through the air at nothing. At its crest, the blade seemed to catch on thin air, leaving a jagged gap of light in its wake. It looked as though he had sliced straight through the sky into a glowing abyss beyond. 

The demons shrieked in pain as the light emanating from the gap burned their shadows. A few tried desperately to attack despite the pain, but Ax swiftly struck them down. The light felt like summer across his skin, warm and comforting. 

“Get in!” Marco said. “It’s our way home!” His face was desperate with fear, clutching the axe and staring at the massing demons behind them.

For a split second, everyone stared at the golden portal, frozen in shock. 

Then Jake snapped, “Change back to humans! We have to go!” 

<I’ll hold them off while you escape,> Aximili said, his decision made without a second thought. If Elfangor had deemed these outsiders worthy, he wasn’t going to question that decision. A strange calm settled around his heart and he turned to face the darkness surrounding them. Tail blade held ready, he cried, <Go quickly!> 

Aximili stood ready to defend again the demons crowded around the edge of glowing light, waiting for an opportunity to strike. His tail blade snapped forward and drove them off as Rachel, Cassie, and Tobias changed back to their normal forms. Jake grabbed Cassie’s hand and jumped forward into the portal, Rachel close behind, but Tobias stopped at the edge. 

“We can’t leave him here!” Tobias cried, gesturing to Aximili. “They’ll kill him!” 

Before Aximili could protest – before he could say anything about the impossibility of going to another world, or even just declare his duty to defend against the Yeerks – Marco grabbed his arm, shouting, “ _Fine_ , I’ll take him with us!”

Marco yanked Aximili into the jagged portal and the world disappeared into a wave of golden light.

 

 

 

 


	3. EPILOGUE

 

 

 

**MARCO**

 

 

It had been a week since their triumphant “rescue” from the forest, and Marco was well and truly sick of the stares. 

When they emerged from the dream world, it had been far past midnight. It was a moonless night, but the forest was lit with flashlights and echoed with their names called by a massive search party. Thinking on his feet, Jake told Aximili to morph into something small, and the large centaur vanished into a lizard just as the first beams of light cast over their group. 

The cries of relief quickly turned to demands for an explanation. Marco knew instantly that their missing day was not going to be brushed aside. They were all soaking wet and covered in dirt, despite the nearest river being miles away, and it was clear that the adults had been searching for hours with no luck. 

“It’s my fault,” Marco said, cutting off the guilty beginnings of an explanation from Jake and Cassie. One search party member – a math teacher from the grade above them – swung his flashlight to face him, and Marco winced at the sudden glare. “I, uh, I had a panic attack and freaked out. I ran away. These guys were just trying to find me.” 

“You’ve been gone sixteen hours!” the teacher exclaimed, tone awash with furious relief. 

“I’m a really fast runner?” Marco lied, shrugging helplessly.

He was briefly spared from further explanation by the arrival of his father, who grabbed Marco and refused to let go for an hour. The other parents all showed up within the next ten minutes as well, forestalling any explanation as they clung to their respective children. Tobias hovered awkwardly alongside the Berenson clan, wrapped in an emergency blanket and cupping Aximili’s lizard form against his chest. Eventually, however, they were ushered to the hospital to be examined for injuries, and Marco was forced to repeat his impromptu explanation over and over again. 

The story stuck, much to everyone’s relief, but it left Marco with endless follow-up appointments and an entire school’s worth of gossip and stares. His father pulled him out of class for a week to recover, during which time Jake and the others were forced to make up whatever explanation they could to satisfy the masses curious about their missing day. 

As it turned out, a week was plenty of time for middle schoolers to come up with some pretty crazy possibilities. 

He had only been at school for a few hours, but the whispers that followed him didn’t show any sign of dying down. Marco sat down at an empty lunch table and poked listlessly at his spaghetti, feeling people’s stares on his back. 

When Jake sat down across from him, Marco asked, “Okay, _seriously_ dude, what did you guys tell them? People are acting like I’m a plague victim.” 

Jake looked chagrined. “Look, it’s not like you gave us much choice. There’s only so many ways we can talk around ‘Marco freaking out and getting lost in the woods’.” 

“People are refusing to look me in the eye,” Marco said. “I overheard one kid saying that I tried to kill you guys by biting off your faces.” 

“Hey, it was _your_ explanation, don’t blame me for the middle school rumor mill.” 

“I hate all of you,” concluded Marco, rolling his eyes. 

“Don’t worry, we hate you, too,” said Rachel as she walked up. She gave him a fake smile and sat down next to Jake. Cassie and Tobias trailed after her, along with some kid Marco had never seen before. He was weirdly pretty for a guy, with familiar dark brown eyes and a mop of messy brown curls on his head, but the effect was ruined by the twitchy, wide-eyed way he stared around the cafeteria. 

“Let me guess,” Marco said, recalling his brief conversation with Jake earlier in the week. “You’re Aximili.” 

“We’re going with Ax,” Tobias said as he gently ushered Ax to sit down next to him at the table. He set a beat-up paper bag on the table and pulled out a plain peanut butter and jelly sandwich. “He’s my cousin from out of state.” 

Ax stared as Tobias took a bite of the sandwich, clearly interested in the food. “W-what sort of food is that? Ood. Hat-uh. TH- _at_.”

“No,” Tobias replied in lieu of answering, sounding like a parent with an unruly toddler who has said the same many times before.

“Ax apparently don’t have a sense of taste in his normal form,” Cassie explained as she took in Marco’s confused expression. “We, uh, had an _interesting_ visit to the mall the other day.” 

“I’m pretty sure we’re banned from Cinnabon now,” Rachel clarified, expression deadpan. 

Marco just stared across the table at Ax, who was now leaning forward to investigate the contents of Cassie’s tray. He frowned as he realized why Ax’s eyes looked so familiar. “Wait, did you steal our features when you made up your human morph or something? Are those my eyes?” 

Ax glanced up at him, his brow furrowing in a way that was uncomfortably similar to Jake. “I created a form based on the outsiders I had seen. Een. Seen-nuh. It is a mesh of all of you. Meh-shuh.” 

“Cool, that’s not freaky at all,” Marco replied. He twirled a few strands of spaghetti around his fork, but his appetite was nowhere to be found. Around the cafeteria, he could still see people watching him and whispering, and it made him want to make a scene just so he could justify their stares. 

“We need to talk about the other world,” Cassie said. Her tone was conciliatory, like she was beginning negotiations at a war council. From the weight of the silence that followed, this was something they had all discussed earlier. 

Marco glanced around, knitting his brow, and said, “Yeah, I know about as much as you guys do about all the demons or whatever.” 

“Oh, that’s a lie,” Rachel muttered, staring him down with an expression of perfect authority. 

“I’ve never seen them before either!” Marco protested. He gestured at Ax, adding, “And I have no idea what the hell you’re supposed to be.” 

“I am an Andalite. Da-light.” 

“You called it a dream world,” Jake said. His gaze was a heavy weight across Marco’s chest, striking worse than Rachel’s accusations. “And you said you pulled that axe from your dreams.” 

“You have dreamer magic. Maa- _gick._ Jick.” Ax added. 

“Do you know what a Greywaren is?” Tobias asked, pointedly. 

Marco sighed, giving up on the pretense of eating his spaghetti and sitting back in his chair. The sheer speed of the questions showed that they had already talked about this while Marco was busy getting ushered from one appointment to another. He resisted the urged to squirm uncomfortably under the combined weight of their stares. Unbidden, he could hear his mother’s voice in the back of his mind. 

_“This is a gift just for us, sweetheart,” she said, placing her pointer finger to her lips and mouthing a hushed whisper. “Even daddy doesn’t know. No one can.”_  

“It’s a long story,” Marco finally said, his mother’s words weighing heavily on his heart even as he went against them. “I didn’t know the dream world was connected to the real world like that. We always just visited in our dreams.” 

“We?” Cassie asked. 

“The Greywaren,” Marco answered. Reading the question in everyone’s eyes, Marco hesitated for a brief moment before adding, “My mother. She’s the Greywaren. She’s a dreamer like me, but she made the forest. We used to train there.” 

“She’s the one the demons kidnapped,” Tobias reasoned. 

“I thought I saw her at the banyan tree, but I was too far away,” Marco said, anger burning low in his stomach. “The demons have her trapped there.” 

“We have to stop them,” Rachel said immediately. “We have the morphing power now, thanks to Elfangor. And you said they’d start invading our world next, right Ax?” 

“Ye-suh,” Ax replied. He tried to nod, clearly mimicking the gesture from observation and only partially pulling it off. “I’ve been able to locate a few areas in the forest where the divide between the worlds is thin. Thhhin. It will not be long before the Yeerks wear it down. Ow-nn. Duh-ow-n.” 

“But how are we supposed to stop them?” Cassie asked. “We barely escaped with our lives last time.” 

“We’re the only ones who know,” Tobias said quietly. “We have to do something.” 

Marco stared down at his untouched plate of food, his sheer terror of the demons mixing with his desperate, furious desire to catch another glimpse of his mother. Quietly, he said, “Whatever we do, my mom is trapped there. I have to at least try to rescue her.” 

“My people will help if we can find a way to tell them,” Ax assured him. He spoke slowly, clearly trying not to stumble over his words for his solemn vow. 

The only one who hadn’t spoken was Jake, who regarded each member of the group with a serious expression on his face. 

“Okay,” Jake said, after a long moment of silence. He looked at Marco and Ax in turn, a general looking to his officers, and sighed with the air of a person shouldering a heavy weight. “How do we start?”

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THE END. Because seriously this story has already taken WAY TOO MUCH TIME and I need a break. OTL
> 
> I hope you all enjoyed this fusion. I currently don't have plans to continue it, but I've left it open-ended in case I want to come back to this. The credit for the prompt goes to Poetry, as she's the one who selected me for Fandom Trumps Hate. This definitely doesn't compare to her fantastic Daemorphing series, but I hope it was enjoyable to read. 
> 
> For those who haven't read the Raven Cycle series by Maggie Stiefvater, I highly recommend it. Lots of magical realism and fantastic characters and engaging plots. :) If anything, it'll help explain some of the elements of this story, as psychics, dreamers, mirrors, and time-distorting dream forests play a large role in the Raven Cycle. ;P
> 
> If you liked this story, please let me know in the comments below! I always love hearing from people. Feel free to follow me on Tumblr as well, where I also go by "panaili".


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